


Switch

by Armengard



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Awkward Magical Curses, Bad Flirting, Bodyswap, Eventual Smut, F/F, Hindu Epics, Pre-Relationship, Rakshasas, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy - Freeform, sri lanka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-09-29 23:20:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 37,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17212754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Armengard/pseuds/Armengard
Summary: Ride's been bumpy, sure. Littered with potholes, hazards, and the like, but she and Nadine, they're handling it fairly well so far. Least, Chloe thinks so. Not that she has anything to go on, to compare it to.Not everyday you have to learn how to live in a body that isn't yours, after all.(ye olde bodyswappe ficce)





	1. AFTER

First thing Chloe does, just after waking up, is go for a run.

Course, she’s not doing it, at all, because she wants to. Christ, it’s the _worst_. Honestly. Sure it’s good for you and all that—makes the body strong, the heart healthy—but, really, at what cost?

Five miles, flat out, she does, winding back and forth through the gloomy-dawned streets of Johannesburg’s outskirts, her pace at something close to an all-out sprint. It’s supposed to be a _run_ , not a _jog_ , or so Nadine says, her disdain conveyed through spotty text messages kicked through at odd times from the wonky cell reception here in South Africa—it’s annoying, but they can’t talk aloud, over the phone. Or, not yet, at least.

Nadine also says if Chloe doesn’t go for her customary daily run, that she’ll kick her arse to Halibidu and back once they get their shit ‘proper sorted.’

So, Chloe? She runs.

She still hates it, though. Adamantly. Not just the sweating and the general exercise of it, but having to wake up early, too. Nadine, she’d get up at bloody 4 or 5 AM, before… Before _this_. But Chloe, she can’t. Like, mentally, she won’t do it. She _refuses_.

Unfortunately, after their latest development, physically, she very much can. 5 AM hits, and her eyes pop open, just like that.

 _Horrible_.

Helps that it’s so easy, the running. Like, stupidly so. First time she did it—feeling guilty for putting it off so long, knowing it wouldn’t _really_ make Nadine happy, but doing it anyways on the off chance it’d jump-start the arduous task of patching their crumbling (work/friend/whatever else) relationship back together—she’d been shocked by its simplicity. You went outside and you ran. That’s it. She’d marveled at the strength in her unfamiliar legs, pumping hard beneath her, tireless; the sharp slap of sneakers on pavement, creating an almost trance-like lull; her powerful lungs, cutting in harsh bursts of air through her teeth in steady, rhythmic gasps. Didn’t have to think about it, the running. Automatic. Like a machine.

After a run, she does weights. More than Chloe’s ever lifted in her life, probably. Pulling yourself up a sheer cliff, fingers bloodless and aching in their desperate search for the next set of jagged handholds, maybe slipping once or twice before reaching the top and hauling yourself over the edge, is enough exercise for her, thanks. More than.

Not for Nadine, though. She’d told Chloe if she lost a single ounce of muscle mass during this mess, she’d hold her personally responsible, then texted her a strict workout regimen to follow, ‘bout a week or so ago. Chloe’s been following it diligently enough, though it all tends to get a bit boring for her. It’s too easy, like the running. Requires almost no thought, just effort. She puts the telly on now, when she lifts. Watches whatever's on. Listens to music, too. Like the running, though, she still hates it.

First time she finished the entire routine, feeling sweaty and aching but only slightly fatigued, Chloe’d been a bit in awe at herself. Still is, every time she walks by a mirror, or finishes some rigorous exercise or another. How strong, exactly, is she right now? Just what is this body capable of that she was physically unable to perform before? Lots, it seems. More than she can imagine. The possibilities are endless.

Not that she’d just, you know, take it out for a spin or anything. She promised Nadine she wouldn’t. Nadine’d done the same. Trust. That’s what their business, their partnership is forged in. Iron-clad and strong, hard-tempered by the fires of a runaway train, a jewel-encrusted tusk, and certain death, barely escaped. That trust, Chloe won’t break, won’t even test. Not for anything.

Still, it’s nice to stand in the bathroom before bed in her underwear and just _look_ , you know? It’s a gorgeous body. When she flexes, she feels faint, most times. Chloe doesn’t feel guilty about it, but she also neglects to tell Nadine she’s doing it. Probably, Nadine’s doing something like the same before she goes to bed, too. Or, Chloe hopes so. She’s got _some_ pride, after all.

 

—

 

This morning’s workout complete, Chloe swipes sweat off her brow and stretches with a groan. She’s pleasantly fatigued, but already she knows that in a few hours and after some breakfast, she’ll feel fresh and strong and fit as ever. She takes a flushed selfie, sends it to Nadine as proof of fulfilling her end of the bargain. Then it’s a shower, and a change of clothes—which, considering this is Nadine’s closet she’s picking from, mostly consists of a “choice” between a dozen of the exact same shirt and pant combinations, all in drab brown or green or canvas print. Chloe’s tired of bickering about it, though, and snatches the first thing she sees, dressing perfunctorily, without too much gratuitous peeking on her part. Painful, yes, but doable.

Her phone buzzes—well, not _her_ phone, per se. Chloe’s own precious phone is with Nadine at the moment, while Chloe’s stuck with her partner’s clunky equivalent, scratched all to hell and heavy as a brick. The thing could bludgeon an insurgent. Still, it fits the image. Nadine Ross should be using Nadine Ross’s phone, right?

Part of the plan, see. Play along. That’s what they’d agreed, back when it first happened. Also discussed: stay calm. Pretend everything’s normal. Stop bloody _screaming_ already. They can fix this. They will. Just wait.

Wait.

Chloe hates waiting.

Least their phones aren’t hacked. They’ve made sure. She and Nadine can text each other whatever and whenever they like, which is a relief—Chloe’s a good actress, but Nadine needs practice. Have to watch what they say aloud, which is why they don’t call one another. Chloe’s found two bugs so far, hidden about in Nadine’s apartment. Listening devices, tiny, snuck in who-knows-when. She’s about eighty percent sure there is at least one more. Hasn’t found it yet, but the rooms are running out, and she’s narrowed it down to the bedroom, which is a bit creepy, when you think about it.

On her end, Nadine’s found three at Chloe's place and is staggeringly confident there are no more. She was the one to insist they were being monitored, and started them off on sweeps of their respective apartments. Good thing, too, considering. Always better to err on the side of caution when it comes to men like Damon Mathers and his team of no-good goons.

Nadine’s phone buzzes again. Chloe finds it where she left it on the couch, swipes at the screen. Nadine’s texted her a photo of a tall glass of greenish liquid.

 _The hell is that?_ Chloe texts her, disgusted. She adds a puking emoji.

 _Breakfast, hopefully_ , Nadine replies.

 _Don’t you dare drink that!_ Chloe texts back, furious.

_Really, Frazer?_

_I told you, do not put healthy things in MY body!_

It’s quiet, for a bit. Nadine seems almost petulant when she finally replies, _What do you want me to eat, then? I’m tired of your cereal and toast. Too many carbohydrates._

 _Pancakes_ , Chloe sends, just to be a brat. She couldn’t care less what Nadine eats, so long as it’s not some spinach slurpee.

 _Omelette?_ Nadine tries, like it’s better than nothing.

Chloe blanches at first, then gives up. Sacrifices must be made on both ends for this to work. _Have a coffee with it. Do NOT drink it black.  
_

_Fine._

Chloe sighs, and sits down to her own breakfast. Traditional South African food is unfamiliar to her, but she finds she likes its richness, the homey flavors and earthy teas. Much of their cuisine is English-influenced besides, so she gets to enjoy some of her old favorites here and there. Nadine’s pantry—if you can call it that, bare and bleak as it is—is set up like she’s being rationed, or preparing for doomsday, so for the past few weeks, Chloe’s made do with simple _mieliepap_ every morning, though not entirely without fuss. So she's spoiled—so what? She’s quite sure when they meet up again in the foreseeable future that Nadine will punch her within the first five seconds after all her very well-deserved and perfectly reasonable amount of complaining.

It was hard at first, she recalls, trying to get all the details ironed out between them as well as they could, a scramble on both their parts to put their lives into something that even remotely resembled order. It was beyond daunting; Chloe’d wanted to just give up and move in together ‘til they figured out what to do next. Christ, she would’ve been fine with just finding the nearest hotel and hunkering down there, like refugees. Nadine was the one to shut that down.

 _No_ , she'd said, after several rounds of understandable freaking out, frantic pacing, and foul shouting. _We’re going to solve this. Together. Calmly. Rationally._

And quickly, it went unsaid, with someone like Damon looking over their shoulders. Waiting for them to mess up, to come swooping in, grind them into the dirt, and bury them alive with his rag-tag army and his dirty money.

Should’ve known about him. Chloe acknowledges this now, with some bitterness. Okay, a lot of bitterness. Nate’d warned her, back when Damon first approached the newly-minted Frazer-Ross Acquisitions, something like a month ago.

 _Don’t get involved with this guy,_ he’d said, when she told him about it, in a rushed phone conversation with Elena and their toddler Cassie squealing in the background. Chloe wished now he’d been more stern with her. As it was, she sort’ve hadn’t been listening as he relayed: _He’s bad news, Chloe. Really._

So, true to form, Chloe’d politely met with the man, Mr. Damon Mathers, and heard him out about a proposal to work together on exploring a lost temple in Sri Lanka he’d discovered, dedicated to some ancient deity or another. And then, with as much respect and professionalism as she could muster, she turned him down.

Nate, she thought, would’ve been proud of her candor.

That she’d immediately afterwards thrown together a hasty, half-baked plan to rip Damon off before he could get to whatever it was waiting for them in Sri Lanka, though… No, Nate wouldn’t like that. Not at all.

'Course, it was never that easy, was it? Hadn’t worked, anyways, the plan. Well, it had. Sort of. The first part. Definitely not the second.

And so now they’re here—on tenterhooks, trying to pretend they don’t know that Damon knows what they’ve done, that they never snuck to Sri Lanka in the first place, never found the temple Damon’d approached them about, never found the ominous door leading to what _had_ to be the treasure chamber, sanskrit lettering scrawled all across the dusty stone, never found a clearly-booby-trapped altar in the middle of all that, never did something so terribly stupid like, oh, say, _touch it anyways—_

But, the past is past. Chloe's over it. Never one for regrets, her. She finds it's best not to think too hard about it.

Now, Chloe’s done it before—robbed people. Tricked ‘em. Swindled them blind. Usually she reserves such behavior for complete arseholes, the kind of treasure hunters who want nothing more than a cheap buck, preservation of forgotten cultures and destruction of priceless other artifacts be damned. Chloe had hoped this would be more of the same—a quick job, an angry, would-be client, a good story to tell in the future—but, unfortunately for them, Damon was smarter than that. Chloe knows this now, good as that’ll do her and Nadine.

Or is he, though?

Damon _is_ watching them, sure. Nobody else has reason to be tailing them at the moment. Chloe has far more friends than enemies in this business. Probably, he has an inkling they tried to rip him off, and only partly succeeded. But so far as Chloe can tell, he doesn’t know what _actually_ happened. Just thinks they found the temple, tried to get the door open—the same door that’d no doubt stopped him cold, too—and then came back home with tails between their legs.

How long, then, 'til he made a move? 'Til he was satisfied that the temple was safe now, trap sprung. Or had there been no trap at all, he'd wonder? (Nevermind that there very much _was_ ).

And how long, feasibly, could she and Nadine keep this charade of normality up? How long would Damon make them wait? Let them squirm?

Play it cool, she and Nadine had decided. Don’t just up and panic and send everyone else into a panic, too. Act normal. Go home. Don’t call Nate. Don’t tell anyone. They could handle this, just the two of them.

Before, she’d protested. Now, Chloe agrees it was the right choice. Christ, if Nate or Sam ever finds out about this… She’ll never hear the bloody end of it.

Anyways, they’ve gotten through the worst of it—coming up on two weeks, now, since their hush-hush trip to Sri Lanka. It’d been chaos, before, but now, it’s just sorting out the little things, like this. Breakfast. Or, where do you put your laundry? Where do you get your groceries, I’m out of milk? I can’t find the bloody remote, where do you keep it?

Simple.

Ride’s been bumpy, sure. Littered with potholes, hazards and the like, but she and Nadine, they’re handling it fairly well so far. Least, Chloe thinks so. Not that she has anything to go on, to compare it to.

Not everyday you have to learn how to live in a body that isn’t yours, after all.

 

—

 

Nadine Ross isn’t exactly furious about the new situation she’s currently and very unwillingly embroiled in. It’s a unique one; one which she’s quite sure no one else has ever experienced, or could provide sound advice for. There is no handbook to follow here. No set rules. No orders. Nothing.

Let it never be said that Nadine Ross is unprepared, however. She adapts. Learns. Evolves. She has yet to face any given hurdle without devising some way of leaping over it.

But this is not something she can punch, or shoot, or manhandle into her control. This is something of which she can, in essence, do absolutely nothing about. She is helpless, here—though, at the very least, she is not alone.

So, yes, while she isn’t exactly _furious_ , she is entirely unhappy, irritable, and very, very short-tempered, and growing worse by the day. Her patience for everything and everyone has been basically reduced to null, though at this point her lack of composure over this situation is, in her opinion, completely and righteously justified.

The situation being, of course, the impossible-yet-undeniable reality of being stuck in someone else’s body—that “someone else” being her business partner of the past ten months and counting, a woman she trusts with her life but whose body she would very much rather not personally occupy, for many reasons, most of which are not up for discussion.

The idea of it, of just exactly _how_ this happened, doesn’t bother her too badly. Supernatural occurrences, dark forces, black magic, goddamn _curses_ ; Nadine doesn’t quite believe in these things, but she can at least acknowledge that they, or something like it, do exist in the world. Not everything can be explained with rationality and facts. This, especially. Neither can it be parsed or dissected to locate the exact cause and effect—it simply happened, and that is that.

The _reality_ of it, on the other hand—the blatant fact that this _did_ actually happen, that this is her life now—well, she’s having a bit more trouble with.

Nadine’s body, which has been hers and hers alone for the past thirty-four years of her life, scarred by past trials and tribulations, made strong by hard-fought accomplishments, honed for battle, for work and war and utterly _hers_ , has been taken away. Stolen. In its place, she’s been given another, one that is unfamiliar to her in every way. To say she is upset about this is a massive understatement.

Firstly, it has taken her years to feel completely at home with herself, with the true Nadine. To recognize that she will always be built sturdier than most girls, her face blunt and hard, hair frizzy, skin freckled, muscles pronounced. As a young girl surrounded by the societal expectations of ‘traditional’ femininity and beauty, it bothered her a great deal. Eventually, though, and with many years of work, she’s learned to not only accept but wholeheartedly embrace these characteristics so many others view with disdain.

So, to have these same precious characteristics stripped away entirely and without warning given to someone else was something very close to traumatic for Nadine. She’s not sure she’s recovered yet, even though it’s been two weeks since. Merely thinking about it still hurts a good deal.

Secondly, she now literally feels a stranger in someone else’s skin, and _is_. The body she occupies now is older than hers, pushing forty. It’s softer. Not so rigid or stiff. Weaker in some ways, but stronger in others. Familiar, yet foreign. Everything works, but it doesn’t feel whole, or _hers_ , like somehow it’s aware that its true owner is no longer in residence, and doesn’t quite know what to think of its new one. Nadine finds she echoes the sentiment.

Still, they’ve gotten somewhat used to each other, this body and Nadine. Or, at least, come to an agreement. A stalemate. Not enough to be perfectly comfortable, or happy, but it’s an improvement. Nadine has stopped trying to be so deliberate with it, or overthinking every single movement she makes, unconsciously or not. Still, it isn’t, at all, something she even remotely enjoys, or even likes.

It could be worse, she tells herself during times like this, when her mind is spiraling out of control with a dangerous mix of anger and anxiety. She and Chloe could be dead. That they'd only had their bodies switched was a mercy, no matter Nadine’s opinion. It also could’ve happened all the same if they’d agreed to work with Damon, too. Chloe could’ve been standing in that circle with _him_ when it happened, and _they_ would’ve swapped. Or it could’ve hit all three of them. Nadine feels nauseous, thinking about that. To be stuck in Chloe’s body, and not some stranger, and a man besides, is the slightest comfort.

Nadine strives to be pragmatic about this. If it happened—and it did, obviously—then it can be reversed. Hopefully. The possibility that this is permanent… Nadine can’t consider it. She just can’t.

Mornings are difficult. Chloe’s body is heavy and sluggish, as though it wants for nothing more than to sleep in, to laze about in bed well into the morning hours. When Nadine does manage to drag it out from beneath the covers, she gets terrible cravings for coffee, and a headache if she doesn’t dose herself with caffeine within an hour of rising. She hates the bitter taste, preferring a good, strong tea, but Chloe’s body simply refuses to rouse without it, so now Nadine has taken to brewing herself a single but sizable mug every morning.

Afternoons are better, usually—she feels more alert, intent and focused, though sometimes it's too much. Chloe’s body, she’s noticed, has a constant, underlying tension radiating beneath the skin. It makes Nadine want to bounce her leg rapidly, to jump about, to crack her knuckles over and over—is this why Chloe can never sit still, why she’s always so gung-ho and chipper during their field work? _Eish_.

In the later hours, the tension lingering in her limbs settles into an indistinct buzz of restlessness that Nadine can mostly ignore. At night, however, it’s worse, to the point where it makes falling asleep difficult. She isn’t sure how Chloe usually calms herself enough for proper rest—probably sex, if she dares venture a guess. She staunchly refuses to talk about it. The mortification isn’t worth it. For now, she’s simply prepared to bear it in silence.

The first few days or so after… _this_ , Nadine tried to solve her jittery problem with exercise, as she was used to doing with her own body. She made a singular effort to go for a poorly paced run with a follow-up attempt at handweights, and ended up sore and flagging not even a third of the way through her usual regimen. Chloe’s body just couldn’t handle the abuse her old body took with ease. It frustrated her.

Since then, she’s adapted, and settled for yoga, and taken it up surprisingly quickly. Chloe’s body seems to relish the activity—her limbs are enviously flexible, movements fluid, graceful. Nadine, who is much more used to wild fist-fights and the jarring, violent force of hand-to-hand combat, struggles to achieve the inner peace and focus Chloe seems able to attain with almost no effort.

It doesn’t help that she wants, most of all, to kick and punch and hurt someone over this. Over _everything_. But, ultimately, she’s able to acknowledge with some gratitude that Chloe is taking good care of her own body, back home in South Africa, and so Nadine will fulfill her own side of the bargain, and take care of Chloe’s.

It’s so different here, she’s noticed. London is loud. It’s cold and wet and dreary more often than not. Nadine doesn’t particularly care for it. She misses South Africa’s warmth, the dryness of the air. The quiet of her apartment, on the outskirts of Johannesburg. She misses her mother. Her books. Her wildlife documentaries.

She misses a great many things, to be honest.

Chloe’s flat, for the most part, is quaint. Not modern, but not old, either. A bit messy, too, but Nadine’s learned to cope. It’s a strain not to clean, but to keep up the act, she has to remain neutral. She hopes Chloe is keeping her own apartment neat and orderly, as she’s always kept it, but refrains from mentioning it too often. Nitpicking each other won’t help. They need cooperation. Trust.

Nadine very much trusts her partner. She knows without doubt that Chloe feels the same.

They will get through this, she tells herself, and takes a deep breath, trying to steady her mind while posed on Chloe’s bright red yoga mat in mid- _chaturunga_. Sweat drips off her chin. The trembling in her limbs ceases until she is still as stone.

They _will_ get through this. She will make sure of it.

 

—

 

She’s on her cooldown and finishing up one last cycle of the Sun Salutation when the front door to Chloe’s flat flies open and Samuel Drake stumbles in in all his disheveled glory, a crumpled newspaper in his hand and the last ribbons of cigarette smoke streaming from his nostrils.

“Hey, Chlo!”

It takes everything inside of Nadine, all that inner peace and calm she’s only just managed to scrounge within herself during this yoga meditation, not to snap at him. Call him an idiot. Glare. Or maybe beat him up, but just a little. But she can’t.

Because right now, she’s Chloe.

At least, that’s what Sam thinks.

She cracks a smile. “Hey, mate. Busy night?” Chloe’s accent is tricky to get perfectly right, as Nadine’s brain tries constantly to force her words into her usual South African lilt, fighting against Chloe’s British-Australian husk. It takes concentration. Luckily, Nadine’s heard that smokey purr often enough to get at least a rough approximation of it correct. She’s confident nobody but Chloe’s closest confidantes can tell it’s a little off—namely, herself, Nate, or Victor. Maybe Chloe’s mother, too.

“Shoulda come to the bar with me, find out yourself,” says Sam, grinning back at her disarmingly, his lined face soft and open, with a warm friendliness Nadine Ross has never been privy to, or on the receiving end of—not that she’s ever wanted to be. Sam Drake, her friend? _Eish_. He turns away and her face, hurting from its schooled expression of muffled disdain, immediately folds into a dark scowl.

“Maybe next time,” she says to his back. Sam tosses the newspaper onto the counter and gives her a quick grin over his shoulder. Nadine forces herself to smile back at him, though his hair is a mess and he reeks of booze and body odor. He also badly needs a shave and—is that another tattoo?

 _Christ_ , Nadine can’t stand him.

“I’ll hold you to that,” says Sam. Nadine makes an agreeable sound, finishes her last pose with an admirable amount of poise, then stands and gives him an expectant look, hands on hips. He’s not, after all, staying at Chloe’s place just for the fun of it.

“Nothin’ yet,” says Sam, digging inside Chloe’s fridge for something to eat. He snags a piece of bread, slaps a slice of cheese on it, and eats it in three bites, then heads for the coffee pot, giving Nadine’s leftover dregs a considering swirl.

Inside, Nadine feels herself slump with discouragement. It is expected, though. Damon is smart. He keeps his men tight under his fist. But he _will_ move, eventually.

And that’s what Sam is for—surveillance. A bit of snooping after they’d gotten back from Sri Lanka, and Nadine’d discovered Damon had a base of operations, located right here in London. Knowing she couldn’t go do the recon herself for multiple reasons—sure, she was in Chloe’s body, but she had none of Chloe’s mannerisms memorized, and if she was spotted or reported on back to Damon, someone was sure to notice something was wrong—they’d called Sam in. Gave him a fraction of the story, promised to pay him a decent rate for the trouble. For a Drake—or, _this_ Drake—that was enough, and he’d agreed right away.

Other than the warehouse where Damon’s operations were based but which he rarely visited personally, Nadine also found out some of his men liked to frequent a bar on London’s south side. Sam’s job was to keep an eye on them, reporting back any suspicious behavior. On the nights they didn’t show at the bar, he made casual drivebys at their warehouse, looking for activity—activity that would inevitably mean Damon was ready to return to his temple, and nab his supposed treasure.

Nadine had suspected from the start that Damon was already three steps ahead of them. Naturally, that’d turned out to be correct. Clearly—though Chloe seemed intent on denying it—he’d baited them into trying to cheat him. Probably, he’d known about the booby trap, known that Chloe would think the chance of easy treasure too good to pass up. He’d _wanted_ them to trip it, so he wouldn’t.

And, in the end, he’d been right. They’d tripped it, ended up like this. Now they could only hope their acting was good enough for Damon to believe the trap had been inert, or nonexistent, and would hopefully return to Sri Lanka soon to delve deeper into the temple for his prize.

Then it’d be round two for Chloe and Nadine. If anything was going to get them out of this mess, it'd surely be in that same temple.

It’s a stupid plan, yes, but it’s all they have—tricking a man who’s already tricked them. Nadine hates the danger they’re in. The helplessness of their forced inaction. But what else can they do?

“Why you watchin’ this guy, anyways?” Sam asks, chewing noisily at the crumbs of his bread-and-cheese and pouring himself a cup of cold coffee. “Nate says he’s dirty. Like, real dirty. Tried to cheat ‘im on a salvage job, I guess, a while ago.”

It takes a moment to reply, because the very first thing Nadine wants to say is, _Well, Chloe and I—_ but no, _she’s_ Chloe right now, and _Christ_ if this isn’t still so confusing. Chloe, probably, is having a better time of it, over there in South Africa by herself, with no impromptu roommate.

“Following a lead, that’s all,” she says without inflection. It’s best to keep the Drakes out of this one. Less collateral damage. Chloe had insisted. “Just keep an eye out, will you?” She even tacks on a quick, “Please.”

Sam shrugs. Grunts. Sips from his coffee. “Sure. Whatever. I’m beat. I’m gonna go take a nap, okay? Maybe I’ll swing by their warehouse again later. See if anything’s happening.”

Nadine nods, says “Thanks” without a hint of sarcasm for probably the first time when it comes to a Drake. Sam waves her off and heads down the hall to the guest room, where he’s been sleeping for the past few days.

Once the door is closed, she lets out a sigh, leans against the nearest counter. Shit. No movement means more waiting, and more time, stuck like this, when all Nadine wants to do it go, and run, and just _fokken_ _do this_ already.

It’s draining, keeping up the ruse. Sam makes it harder, despite him having not caught on since arriving. Idiot. Nadine’s been doing her best in regards to him hanging around Chloe’s apartment, but it’s difficult to deter his banter, the easy, playful friendship he seems to have with her partner. Chloe swears it’s not a common occurrence, him staying over at her place. Supposedly, it’s only happened a few times since India, mostly when Sam needs to “lay low” while waiting on contacts for his own jobs, as he works mostly alone, though sometimes with Victor, and doesn’t quite have the funds they do just yet.

Nadine does appreciate that he’s helping. Really. But she still wishes he could lay low literally anywhere else. Like the gutter.

Still, Sam thinks she’s Chloe, so Nadine has to act like Chloe whenever he’s around. For her part, Nadine tries to make sure she laughs every time Sam makes a stupid joke, or appear interested when he tells her stories of his ridiculous exploits. If she’s not in the mood—and she rarely is—she’ll play on Chloe’s phone and make agreeable noises every so often, which Sam always takes as encouragement to continue talking. Ugh.

It occurs to her at some point that she’s never been around Sam this long. At least, not willingly. Not that this, here and now, is anything close to willing. But it is necessary. Her abject hatred for the man has recently devolved into a grudging aggravation. She at least doesn’t think about shooting him anymore. Or, not right away.

Nadine rolls up the yoga mat and stows it before heading for Chloe’s bedroom. She needs a shower. She’s put it off long enough—almost three days, this time. Caring for this body means cleaning it is a necessary though slightly embarrassing task. So far, Nadine’s kept it as militaristic and efficient as possible.

Still, she might’ve looked in a mirror, once or twice, without clothes on. She can’t help it. Chloe’s body is just so very different from hers. Smaller in some places, fuller in others. Soft in all the places Nadine’s is hard. There are scars she’s never seen before, never heard the stories to. Stretch marks, too, fanning over her hips and breasts in fading lines of silver, and—

Quickly, she steps into the shower, and with strict determination, takes no more than ten minutes to thoroughly clean herself. Usually, Nadine would be done in five or less with her old body, but Chloe’s hair takes work. It’s long and thick and shampooing and conditioning it is an arduous task. She manages well enough, and steps out after rinsing to dry herself off just as quickly.

She tries not to look too much at herself as she dresses. It makes her feel strangely vulnerable—being naked in a body that's not hers—a sensation she is not used to. She does pause, however, to clear a swatch of steam from the mirror above the sink with her palm, and then takes a moment to look at herself, at the face she currently wears, leaning in to peer deep into light grey eyes, so different from her own. Doing so makes her chest ache. She’s never looked at Chloe so intently before, and to have the chance now, the opportunity to study her partner’s face and features so close in the mirror without judgement, to marvel at things like the small scar there, on Chloe’s chin, or the one just above her eyebrow, or the beauty mark above her lip…

She leaves the bathroom several minutes later, feeling guilty, and angry, for feeling guilty, because she hasn’t done anything wrong.

Since she can’t do much else but wait, she reads, or putters about the apartment, feeling terribly restless and unhappy. After a few hours, Sam is up, and looking for some camaraderie. Ugh. Nadine, for the hundredth time since this began, wishes she'd listened to Chloe's pleas, and let them just stay together until they worked this out. If Chloe were here, right now, walking around in Nadine’s body, it’d surely scare Sam back into the safety of his room.

For now, she pastes on a smile and resigns herself to a growing headache.

 

—

 

Chloe texts just as Nadine is preparing for bed. She does that now—checks in from time to time, just to make sure Nadine is doing alright. Nadine is _not_ alright, but she appreciates the sentiment nonetheless.

 _Everything good?_ says the text.

 _Fine_ , Nadine sends back, pausing in her act of braiding Chloe’s long black hair for bed—when she leaves it loose, it’s hopelessly tangled by morning, from all the tossing and turning.

She only realizes how curt her response might’ve seemed afterwards, and finishes her braid with an elastic band on the end before picking the phone back up. _I’m okay_ , she confirms, just in case Chloe was wondering.

Chloe replies, _You sure?_ Like she just _knows_ Nadine is lying.

Reluctantly, Nadine texts back only a sliver of the truth, a mere piece to an entire puzzle that is slowly but surely driving her mad. _Sam’s annoying._

 _LOL_ , sends Chloe. _Sorry. Hang in there, partner._

Nadine fights a grin. Sends back, _Trying_.

_That’s my girl._

She doesn’t hide her grin now. She closes the overhead light, gets into bed. Leaves the lamp on, for now. Chloe’s bed is soft. Too soft. Her blankets are lumpy and thick. Nadine isn’t used to sleeping with such weight on her to keep warm. The sheets smell strongly of Chloe, the same way Nadine’s new body smells now. It makes her drowsy, yet on edge, because it only reminds her once again she is not entirely herself.

 _So it’s just Sam that’s bugging you, then?_ Chloe presses. Probably, she’s bored, way over there in South Africa. She should be sleeping, Nadine notices with a frown. The time difference is minimal between them at only two hours—nothing like it’d be if Chloe lived in Australia. Still, it makes Nadine feel lonely, knowing just how many miles separate them. She misses her own body. Oddly enough, she misses her partner, too, despite the fact that Chloe’s body is technically right there, in front of her.

 _Having a hard time sleeping,_ she finally admits.

 _Same here_ , Chloe replies after a moment. _Better now. Had to get used to that brick you call a bed. Is mine too soft or something?_

Nadine hesitates. She doesn’t want to seem like she’s complaining. _A little. It’s just different, I guess._ Before she can stop herself, she adds, _Your pillowcases are too scratchy_ , and then feels stupid for saying so. She’s told Chloe before that while at home, she uses a satin pillowcase, for her hair. Any other material tends to ruin it, turn it into a frizzed mess. She’s gotten so used to the cool slickness of satin that cotton feels foreign on her face now.

 _Check my bathroom. Bottom cupboard,_ Chloe texts.

Nadine obeys, confused, getting out of bed to enter the bathroom. Inside the little cupboard, next to some spare sheets and old towels, she finds a single white satin pillowcase, clean and folded into a neat square. She stares at it for a long moment, dumbfounded.

She returns to the bedroom, pillowcase in hand, and finds the phone where she left it in her still-warm spot on the sheets. _Why do you have a satin pillowcase?_ she texts.

_It’s for you, silly. I got it like two months ago._

For her…?

 _Why?_ she asks.

 _Dunno,_ sends Chloe, like a shrug. Then, _In case you ever stayed over I guess._

Nadine simply sits there and stares at her phone for a bit, not sure what to type back. There is just too much to unpack with that one statement—that Chloe anticipated a need for the pillowcase, that she hoped Nadine might sleep at her apartment at some point, but for what; work, or something else? Something far more intimate? The prospect makes her nervous, yet she feels strangely touched, moved by this one small fact, that Chloe had thought of her, and done something kind. When was the last time anyone else had made such a tiny yet profound gesture for her? Nadine can’t honestly remember.

 _Thanks_ , she types back. It doesn’t feel like enough.

Chloe sends back a smiley face, and Nadine, oddly, feels like crying.

She puts the phone on the nightstand, slides the satin pillowcase over her pillow, lays down, and rolls over. Chloe’s body sleeps best on its stomach, with her arms cradled under her pillow. The cool slide of the satin against her face is like heaven.

Is it possible, she wonders as she tries to fall asleep, to miss someone so badly, even when they’re already there with you?

 

—

 

Chloe’s just finishing up breakfast the next morning when she hears an odd jangling tune she vaguely recognizes. It takes a moment for her to realize Nadine’s phone is ringing. She gets up jerkily, knowing it can’t be Nadine, since they can’t talk aloud, not with the last bug still to be found in the apartment. Who else—?

She finds the phone where she left it on the counter. The caller ID says _Ma_.

She freezes, a blast of fear hitting her in the guts.

It’s Nadine’s _mother_.

A woman Chloe Frazer has never personally met, and has only heard of in snatches of rushed conversation with her very taciturn, very private business partner.

Oh, dear Christ. This is going to be _horrible_.

Chloe, of course, immediately panics. Flounders. Draws and discards several escape plans—decline the call, power off Nadine’s phone, remove the SIM card. She knows virtually nothing about Nadine’s mother—Nadine’s fault—just that she lives near Cape Town, is retired from being a nurse, served a short stint in the military, and calls Nadine _bokkie_. Chloe also knows that if her “daughter” doesn’t pick up, the woman just might start to worry, maybe enough to kick up a fuss. Then again, if Chloe _does_ pick up, and flubs some detail or another so badly the other woman somehow manages to catch on, how big of a disaster can this swell into?

The phone rings again. And again.

“Shit,” says Chloe. Nadine’s going to kill her for this, she’s sure.

She answers.

At once, her brain blanks. How would Nadine greet her mother?

She hazards a guess. “Ma,” she says, trying for a warm tone.

“Nadine, _bokkie—_!” What follows next is a quick-fire yet drawn-out rattle of Afrikaans of which Chloe catches about every fourth word. Again, Chloe decides, as she begins to sweat, this is entirely Nadine’s fault. She’s asked her partner again and again to teach her. Ross was going to get an earful for this.

She stays quiet, and that seems to be the correct reaction, as Nadine’s mother goes on and on, speckling English words throughout her run-on sentences, until, eventually, having run herself dry, she switches over to a heavily accented English and stays there.

“Tell me, how are you, _bokkie_?” she asks, her voice thick with affection. It gives Chloe pause—because, sure, her own mum’s nice enough, but she doesn’t really check in with Chloe that often. Maybe twice a year, if that. Not that Chloe puts in the effort either, though. Probably, she should visit more. Must be nice, though, having a mother who genuinely cares how you’re doing, and isn’t afraid to show it. Maybe she should tell Nadine to call her mum more often, after all this.

And—oh, shit, she has to talk now, doesn’t she?

“Fine, Ma. Good. I’m good,” she says, then clears her throat awkwardly, not sure how to continue. She can’t imagine Nadine would say much more, not even to her mother. “You?” Again, that somehow seems to be the correct approach, as Nadine’s mother then launches into a long, mostly one-sided conversation about her past few weeks.

Chloe sweats and makes accommodating sounds every once in a while. Should she be speaking more, or less? Would Nadine have told her mother goodbye already, cut her off short? She isn’t sure. Before she realizes it, ten minutes have gone by. Then, fifteen. Twenty. Jesus, why is this so hard? Why doesn’t she know things like this? Such simple yet surprisingly intimate details about her business partner have never been apparent to her. Trivial as it may’ve seemed in the past, now it seems terribly important.

“So,” says Nadine’s mother, finishing up a tale about haggling at a market and getting an outrageously good deal on something or other. “Tell me. How is your work?”

“Good,” says Chloe. She hopes her accent is passable. If anyone’s going to notice it’s not just right, it’s Nadine’s mother. Christ, this is intimidating. “Working on a job, right now. Heading out soon. Might not be able to talk until me and N—until _we_ come back, ja?”

“Of course, of course,” says Nadine’s mother. She’s so understandable and soothing Chloe can’t help but relax a bit. “Why don’t you tell me more about you and your _liefling_. Any new stories for me? Though I am not sure you could have a better one today than the last, eh?” She laughs.

Chloe blinks. She has no idea what a _liefling_ is, or what sort of grand stories Nadine’s been telling her mother about. “Er… ”

“Come now. The story you told me, last time we talked, don’t you remember? About how you and your _liefling_ got stuck in the jungle, when the monkeys took all your food?”

_Monkeys—?_

Oh! Ha. Their Brazil job, that. Chloe stifles her own laugh, lighting up with glee. Nadine had swore she’d never talk about that to anyone, and forced Chloe into secrecy as well, since it’d all been so stupid. Robbed. By monkeys! Taught them to use proper storage containers for food during overnight trips in the bush. They’d had to cut their venture short to go back to town and resupply.

So, then, she realizes, grinning fiercely, Nadine tells her mother about their jobs? And _liefling_ means Chloe? If so, this’ll be easy.

Haltingly, she relates a harrowing tale she hopes—and is somewhat confident—Nadine hasn’t told her mother about, when, several months ago, they’d gone to eastern Indonesia in search of relics. ‘Course, that area was rife with competition, and thieves there weren’t afraid to make enemies, though guns and grenades weren’t their first line of attack. Instead, it was traps—of the normal, man-made, non-magical-curse but no less humiliating variety.

Between them, they’d triggered over six booby traps, feeling stupider the further they went, fighting their way out of rope nets and weighted burlap sacks falling over them. The seventh trap was a foot snare, the kind that yanked you in the air to dangle upside down ‘til your partner found the counterweight. Chloe’d had the pleasure of the dangling, Nadine, the finding. They’d laughed about it, afterwards—didn’t help that by the time Nadine got around to lowering her, Chloe was shrieking from the pursuit of a very small but very determined tree snake making its way down the ankle of her pants.

Chloe relates the story now to Nadine’s mother without an ounce of shame on her part, taking care to keep the narration from Nadine’s stolid perspective. Still, it’s hilarious, and when Nadine’s mother laughs, loud and sharp, it makes Chloe feel good. Accomplished. Like she’s done something right, finally.

The laughter over the line grows deeper, then lowers into a soft chuckle. “Oh, _bokkie_. The things you get up to with your _liefling_.”

“Ja,” says Chloe, trying not to burst out laughing herself. Nadine would probably be too mortified at both of their ineptitude to do so.

It’s quiet. “Usually, you get so angry when I call her that, you know,” says Nadine’s mother, sounding thoughtful. Chloe is afraid for a moment. Does she mean _liefling_? Shit, has she been found out? “I am glad you are not arguing with me any longer.”

“Um. Ja.” Chloe is lost, but doesn’t have it in her to protest.

There is silence over the line for a few seconds. Chloe’s heart starts to thump with renewed nerves.

“You know I will always love you, don’t you, Nadine?” says Nadine’s mother, speaking as though to something that might run and hide if she doesn’t.

Chloe swallows past a sudden, tight knot in her throat at the tone. Jesus, she’s soft. Is that really all it takes for her? “Course, Ma.” Gruffly, she says, “I love you, too.” She will definitely be telling Nadine to call her mother more often after this.

“Good.” Nadine’s mother sounds pleased. “And bring her home sometime, won’t you, _bokkie_? I am very much looking forward to meeting her.”

“Maybe,” Chloe agrees, without quite knowing what she’s agreeing to. Meeting the mother of her partner had never quite been on her to-do list, but it sure is now.

To her relief, Nadine’s mother changes the subject, and after a few more minutes, seems to be winding down their conversation. “Take good care of yourself, yes? Your _liefling_ , too. Can I call you again next week?”

Chloe hopes they'll be fixed by then, and agrees. “Ah, sure.”

Nadine’s mother says a few sweet-sounding words in Afrikaans, probably saying goodbye, but Chloe doesn’t dare try to repeat the Afrikaans back. Her accent is undoubtedly atrocious enough.

Once the call is ended, she googles the word _liefling_.

And—oh, Nadine’s _definitely_ got some explaining to do.

But first—and she faces this now with a renewed fervor unlike any that’s claimed her before—she’s got a goddamn bug to find.

 

—

 

Nadine hasn’t changed her unfavorable opinion about London—it’s too cold, too loud, too _much_ —but she finds, after some reflection, that something about its constant buzz of activity, the thrum of hundreds of thousands of people, of _millions_ , all crammed so close, gives Chloe’s frenetic body some strange sense of respite. Chloe’s apartment, located on the fifth floor of an older building housing a bookstore and coffee shop beneath, has a tiny balcony on the north side, overlooking a busy downtown street. It has exactly enough room for one rickety chair, a tiny table, and the space to stand against the iron-wrought railing and take it all in. Nadine brings out her mug of coffee this morning as she sits warily on the chair, glancing at the lingering clouds above. It's not sunny, but it’s not raining, either, and she wants to get some air.

It’s nice, she concludes, about fifteen minutes later. The traffic is a blur of honking horns and revving engines and the stink of exhaust, the distant clatter of feet and the crush of bodies moving along the sidewalks giving the city a thrum like a heartbeat, let alone the faint scream of the underground subway racing by. It reminds her of her childhood in Johannesburg proper; the close-pressed bodies and buildings, the busyness and roar of it all. Chloe’s body throbs in sympathetic response, and she is content, for just a bit, to sit here, perfectly still and alone, and watch the city move around her.

Naturally, at that moment Sam walks out mid-yawn, another late-night surveillance finished, lit cigarette already in hand, wrinkled shirt open down the front, exposing his tattooed chest and lean stomach, complete with bullet scars and the lingering bruises of some insipid brawl or another.

Despite herself, Nadine feels her upper lip curl into a sneer. The last thing she ever wants to see is a Drake shirtless. The smell of his cigarettes is nauseating, nevermind—

“C’mon, don’t gimme that look,” laughs Drake. Nadine stiffens, caught. She’s let her expressions get away from her. Chloe never would’ve looked at him like that, in such clear disgust.

She sips her coffee to try and cover it up. “Sorry,” she says quickly, on sheer reflex.

Sam just smiles, laughs again. “Hey, you don’t gotta sugarcoat it for me, Chlo, I already know it’s not gonna happen, you and me,” he says, in what sounds to her like a reassuring tone. He leans his elbows onto the balcony railing, gazing out over the city, cigarette dangling between his lips. “I mean, I know you and Nadine have a thing going on and all—”

Nadine jerks so hard she slops coffee over the side of her mug, burning her fingers. She buries a gasp of pain and sets the mug down on the little table with a bit more force than necessary, spilling it even more.

They have a _what?_

“Dunno know what you’re talking about,” she says carefully, then tacks on “mate” half-heartedly.

Sam grins over at her insufferably. Exhales smoke, then brings the cigarette back to his mouth for another draw. “Chloe, c’mon. You’re the one that told me about it.”

Nadine’s stomach twists. She’s glad she put down the coffee, as now she’s sure she’d have dropped it. Suddenly her heart is pounding, and she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. Her neck is growing hot. Christ. Does Chloe Frazer even blush? “...I did?”

Sam exhales another streamer of smoke, wipes his mouth on his wrist. “Yeah. I mean, you were pretty drunk at the time, but then again, so was I. Now _that_ was a fun night.” He laughs bawdily. Nadine is too confused to be annoyed anymore. The stupefied look on her face makes Sam fall quiet and straighten from his spot at the railing. “Come on, Chlo, you really forget about that? We went to that bar I told you about, you know, had drinks, played pool, I tried to make a move—”

Nadine sucks in an audible breath, her blood abruptly boiling at the thought. She’ll kill him. She expected better, but he is a Drake, after all. Soon as she’s back in her own body, she’s going to teach him some manners about how to behave around drunken women—

Sam holds up his hands, no doubt in response to the murderous look on her face, “—and you pushed me away, remember? I said I was sorry right after, and I meant it, honest. No hard feelings. I mean, at the time, I could already tell I shouldn’ta done it. Can't blame a guy for trying, though. And then you started like, crying—”

 _Crying?_ Sam had made Chloe _cry?_

Nadine really isgoing to kill him.

“—and then you started goin’ on ‘bout Nadine, and sayin’ all this stuff like, oh, she got on that train with me, and she’s the best partner I’ve ever had and I can’t lose her, what if I ruin everything, and I don’t deserve someone like her, blah blah blah.” He stops, smokes. Nadine has no other reaction than to stare blankly at him, mouth open. She feels like someone’s just punched her in the face.

Sam lowers his cigarette, frowns. A line of ash falls on his fingers and he shakes it off. “You really don’t remember _any_ of that?”

“Um,” says Nadine. She looks away, fiddles with the handle to her coffee mug, trying to relax, to seem normal, seem like Chloe. Shit. “No.”

Sam waves a flippant hand. “Whatever. Don’t worry about it. Just sayin’. You got nothin’ to worry about with me.” They’re quiet for a bit, awkward now, and then Sam turns back to the railing and says lightly, “Just so you know, I might not be Nadine’s number one fan or anything, but, y’know. She’s alright.”

Nadine isn’t sure if that’s a compliment or not. “...Thanks?” she says.

Sam finishes his cigarette, and then, of course, fishes out another and lights it, taking a drag that’s a little less obnoxious than before. “No problem. Invite me to the wedding, won’t ya?” He laughs again.

Nadine takes a massive gulp of her coffee. It’s so hot it scalds her throat all the way down, and then settles in her chest like an ember.

 

—

 

Two hours later, Sam is out, and Nadine is obeying Chloe’s lazy body and lounging on the couch, playing on her phone. Looking at animals keeps her mind off things. Since her conversation with Sam, she finds she needs her mind to be distracted more than ever.

She’s scrolling through images of giant pandas when a text comes through from Chloe. On instinct, Nadine grimaces—Chloe cried because of her, she talked to _Sam_ about it, about _them_. What’s it all supposed to mean—?

It’s a photo. Nadine blinks, not sure what’s she looking at. It looks like a squashed bug. A moment later, it hits—it _is_ a bug. It's the listening device, the last one hidden in Nadine’s apartment, keeping them from speaking over the phone. Chloe’s found it. She—

Immediately, the phone in her hands begins to ring. Nadine doesn’t have the time to be nervous, or alarmed. She answers.

Chloe, of course, opens the conversation with an unabashedly delighted shriek of, “Your mother thinks I’m your _girlfriend?_ ”

 _Eish_ , Nadine thinks, and feels her stomach drop even lower than it had that morning, with Sam. She covers her face with a hand. She knew her mother would call eventually. She'd hoped Chloe would simply decline the call, but it seems she’s not so lucky.

“Is she still on with that?” she says, trying for humor when really she’s just mortified.

“I dunno, _liefling_ , what do you think?”

“ _Eish_ ,” Nadine says aloud. “I keep telling her you’re not, but she won’t listen. Just ignore her—"

“What? No!” Chloe cuts in. “This is hilarious. She’s my new favorite person ever. And besides, you’re going to bring me to meet her. I already told her I—well, you—would. I can't wait. _Liefling_.” Then she laughs so hard she snorts.

Nadine rolls her eyes. Finds herself muttering, “She and Sam can make a club.”

“What’s that?” says Chloe, curiosity breaking through her laughter.

Shit. “Nothing,” Nadine says quickly, swallows. Why did she say that?

“No, come on,” Chloe prods.

Nadine hesitates. “It’s nothing. Just. Drake thinks something’s going on, too.”

“Going on?”

“Between me and you.”

“...Oh.” Nadine can hear the moment it clicks for Chloe. The moment she realizes exactly what Nadine’s talking about, the moment she remembers that drunken night with Sam at the bar. And realizing that Nadine must know about it, too, now, at least to some degree. “That’s funny,” she says, but the humor in her tone is fainter now. Strained on the very edge.

Nadine is quiet. She wants to ask Chloe, _why were you crying about me?_ And, _why do you think you don’t deserve me?_ And, _of course I got on that train with you, did you really think I wouldn’t?_

Instead, she simply asks, “You doing okay?” It’s nice to ask aloud, for once. Texting is so impersonal. Hearing Chloe’s voice—although it’s not _her_ voice, it’s Nadine’s, just in Chloe’s accent, which sounds so terribly wrong and yet right—is like a balm to a burn.

Just like that, Chloe’s back to normal. “You mean, other than fielding a phone call with your mum? Not so bad. You?”

“Alright, I guess.”

“Glad we can talk to each other again.”

Tease each other, Chloe means, probably. Nadine rolls her eyes again. “Me, too.” She glances around the empty apartment. “Sam’s out. Surveillance.”

“Good man,” says Chloe. “Shouldn’t be long now.”

“Ja.”

They fall quiet. There is simply too much for either of them to say. Rather than pick, they say nothing.

“Did you sleep better?” Chloe asks suddenly.

“Hmm?”

"Y'know, with the pillowcase?”

“Oh. Ja. I did. Thanks.” Nadine bites her lip, shifts around on the couch. Chloe’s body is buzzing faintly but with growing intensity, like it does late at night, as if perhaps reacting to Chloe's voice. Like it knows the sound of its true owner. Already, Nadine feels restless, teeming. On the brink of something vast and frightening.

“You sure? You sound sort of tired, china.”

Nadine struggles with herself. She wants to be honest. “I am. Kind of.”

“Go take a nap, then. I need my twelve hours, after all.”

A small chuckle leaves Nadine’s lips. “It’s not that kind of tired.” For a moment, she considers changing the subject, thinking it’ll be too difficult to explain—but this is Chloe. This is her body. Who else would understand so well? “It’s just… Are you always this…” She isn’t sure of the word for it. “Tense?” she tries.

Chloe laughs uproariously. “You’re joking. I’m never tense.”

“Restless, then.” She sits up. Her leg is jittering underneath her. “Like, like I need to _do_ something. But I tried exercise, and that didn’t work.”

“I could’ve bloody told you that.”

“Well, what else am I supposed to do? I just want it to stop. I just want to be, y’know. _Still_. I do yoga, and that helps, but… I’m going crazy, here.”

It’s quiet, and then Chloe lets out a sharp, abrupt laugh. “That’s—I’m—oh, this is rich. You need to get _laid_ is what it is.”

Nadine goes flush with a combination of horror and embarrassment. Of course Chloe Frazer would suggest that. She can’t help blurting out, “ _What?_ ”

Chloe just laughs. “It’ll help, I swear!” she insists.

“I am not—” She stops for a moment. “Are you telling me I’m feeling like this because I’m—because your body’s—?”

“There is _nothing_ wrong with having a strong sex drive,” Chloe cuts in defensively, before Nadine can voice the words she's imagining; _turned on_. “And if memory serves, it’s been a while for me, so whoever you pick—”

“Shut up!” Nadine covers her face with a hand—well, Chloe’s face and Chloe's hand, but who’s keeping track anymore? “I’m _not_ doing that.”

“Fine,” says Chloe flippantly, and Nadine relaxes minutely, because of course Chloe’s not going to let _that_ go so easily, she’s probably— “Just do it yourself, then.”

Nadine is utterly silent.

“I have a vibrator," Chloe goes on. "It’s in the bureau.”

Nadine physically puts the phone down, covers her face, and sighs deeply, fighting a long-suffering groan. By the time she picks the phone back up—against her better judgement—Chloe is laughing so hard she’s coughing.

“Honest,” she gets out through staggered breaths, “I’ll—I usually relax after. You’ll feel better. I swear.”

“ _No_ ,” says Nadine, with finality. She refuses to let Chloe Frazer make her splutter like a goddamn idiot.

“Alright,” says Chloe, the last of her laughter dying in a husky chuckle in the back of her throat. “...Just saying. You have my blessing, if you change your mind. If I was there—"

“If you were here, _what?_ ” Nadine challenges, her temper flaring. She’s getting a little tired of always being the butt of the joke. Lately, especially.

“Nothing. Just…" She snickers wickedly. "Suppose _I_ did it, for you—?”

Nadine is so shocked by the offer— _is_ it an offer? A real one? _Christ_ —she goes completely silent. As though she can sense her outraged reaction through the phone, Chloe yells:

“Oh, please, Ross, when you think about it, really, it’s no different from masturbating—”

“Not while I'm in here, it's not!” Nadine practically roars back. “ _Eish_ , are you serious?" A hysterical sort of laugh crawls up her throat at the ridiculousness of it all. "That—that’d be worse than just me! I'd have to look at _myself_ , doing it—”

Chloe sniffs, fake-offended. “Worse? Excuse me. I’m just trying to _help_ , here. I—”

The door to Chloe’s flat slams open. Nadine sits bolt upright, her entire conversation with Chloe forgotten in an instant as Sam rushes in with a harried look.

“Nadine? Nadine?” she hears Chloe’s calling, voice tinny from the cellphone speaker, screen jammed to her shoulder. She presses harder, hopes desperately Sam can’t hear.

“What is it?” she asks him.

In reply, Sam speaks the two most beautiful words Nadine has ever heard—other than Chloe’s quiet, _Right… partner?_

“Damon’s moving.”

And, just like that, it’s time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> back on my bullshit


	2. BEFORE

“This is it, then?”

“Well, gee, china, don’t sound so excited.” Still panting a bit from their trek in, Chloe dusted off her pants with one hand and shone her flashlight about with the other. The darkness surrounding them was practically absolute. She shuffled away from her grumbling partner, running her free hand searchingly over the carved stone walls. After a bit of poking around, she located an ancient-looking latch and pulled it before Nadine could tell her not to.

Instantly, the chamber filled with light, torches flaring to life in a semi-circle around them.

“There we go,” said Chloe triumphantly, who had only been about forty percent sure the switch wasn’t a trap.

Nadine just grunted, unimpressed either by the chamber’s new lighting or by her partner’s bravado, or perhaps a combination of the two. She’d been in a foul mood since the boat ride from Thoothukudi, a port in the southern tip of India, to the island of Sri Lanka. Though the oversea trip had been short, the weather was nasty, a ferocious wind and choppy waves throwing the boat and its passengers about like toys. Probably, she was still feeling seasick. Chloe could sympathize.

Hike in wasn’t fun, either. They'd made a stop at Anuradhapura, a busy Sri Lankan city, to rent a room as a home base and shop for supplies, before heading from civilization and into the bush. The Sri Lankan jungle was notoriously thick, unforgiving. Their jeep—not rented so much as purchased outright from a local in a much-smaller town further south for an absurd amount of rupees—could only go so far into the untamed brush before they had to hoof it through squelching mud, craggy runoffs, and up and over the odd perilous cliff or two, swatting bugs and listening to the high-pitched chitter of purple-faced langurs and the rude cries of blue magpies the entire time. Also, according to Nadine, there were supposedly Sri Lankan leopards hiding about, too, which was just... _wonderful_.

They'd found the temple without incident and only some backtracking, at least, its entrance not so much a doorway as a chasm of fallen rock and tree roots, leading down. Good thing they'd brought their trusty ropes.

And now? Now they were here, making goddamn _history_ , Chloe jittery with the thought of treasure, her partner, predictably and infuriatingly nonchalant with it all.

“Come on, Ross, you’re hurting my feelings.” Chloe looked about, then scowled herself. True, the room they were currently standing in wasn’t exactly awe-inspiring, per se—well, other than the ungodly amount of crumbled, broken debris and dust-thickened cobwebs draped over every available surface, and was that a skeleton, over there in the corner? Maybe not—but, for Christ’s sake, they were still standing in a long-forgotten ancient temple buried in the heart of a Sri Lankan jungle, completely untouched for hundreds, if not thousands of years!

If _that_ wasn't something to write home about, Chloe didn't know what was. Sometimes, there was just no pleasing her partner.

Nadine crossed her impressive arms over her chest and cocked her hip to the side, eyeing the octogonal-shaped room around them. “Remind me again why we’re doing something so stupid.”

"Raiding a tomb, you mean?"

" _Cheating_ someone."

Chloe grinned at her. “Because we can get away with it, that’s why.”

Nadine shook her head. “Look. I don’t know this Damon man. But Drake warned you about him, ja?”

“Nate’s overreacting. He’s such a _dad_ now. It’ll be fine.”

“You know I don’t like risks,” Nadine reminded, quite unnecessarily.

“How is it a risk when it’s a sure thing? Listen. An hour, tops, and we’ll be out of here with enough artifacts to fund our next three jobs. I'll even hand them over for finder's fees, to whichever historical institute you want. And then you can pick the next job, alright? This one can be on me. Something goes wrong, it’s my fault, yeah?”

Nadine mulled that over for a moment. Still looking entirely unpleased, she sighed, but uncrossed her arms. “Fine. Still don’t like it, though.”

“Noted.” Chloe looked around the room again. On the far side, opposite the door they’d entered from, was another entrance, blocked by a massive slab of stone. “Think that’s our way through. Must be something to pull around here, or a puzzle to solve, maybe.” She started rifling through the mess decorating the floor around them, sifting through fallen piles of debris.

“How, again, do we know Damon hasn’t already been here, cleaned it out?” asked Nadine, getting to work on her own side of the room.

“Trust me, love, he hasn’t. If he’s only just starting to gather up a team—which again, is why he approached me, or _us_ , in the first place—then there’s no way he’s already gotten inside. _Maybe_ he got through the front door, sure, but then he must’ve decided he was in over his head and went to get a real professional. Yours truly.” At that, she grinned proudly to herself, already acutely aware that Nadine was ignoring her.

“Ja,” her partner grumbled. “Because we’re not in over our heads either, right?”

Chloe ignored the sarcasm. “Right-o, china.”

It was true. Least, Chloe thought so. She knew what she was doing, and Nadine, she was a quick study. Plus, a two-woman team, technically, was much faster and far more efficient than a bumbling group of, say, thirty. She and Nadine had the capability of getting to the temple’s inner chamber and leaving without a fuss, and without getting caught. In the time it would take Damon to gather his men and all their supplies, and then actually get to the island, she and Nadine could be out and gone and all the more well-off.

Realistically, Chloe knew they should have waited a bit longer, to throw Damon off their scent. Or maybe not come here at all. But if they _had_ waited, they ran the risk of the man himself bursting into the same temple as them while they were mid-clearing the place out. Trying to swipe a find from a known bruiser was, as Nadine’d so graciously pointed out, an incredibly stupid thing to do. But Chloe was confident. She’d done it a million times throughout her treasure-hunting career—okay fine, not a million. But maybe six or seven, tops. That was plenty.

Damon wasn't someone to be made a fool of, yes, but he was cocky. Perhaps it wouldn’t even occur to him that they might try to rip him off.

Chloe wasn't worried either way. This was her bread and butter. Her area of expertise.

Rakshasas, however, were not. A temple dedicated to one—as she'd deduced, a few rooms back, based on carved figures and stray sanskrit lettering—even more so. Hindu Gods, she was more familiar with, along with well-known legends and myths. Still, she’d done some homework. Cursory research claimed Rakshasas were man-eaters, demons, and tricksters from the fantastical days of ancient India, like monsters and boogie-men from bedtime stories. Some were said to have command of black magic and sorcery. Others, great size or strength. Pretty much all of them were nasty buggers up to no good. Most served a singular purpose in the old tales; to be killed by the hero. That one had been granted the honor of having a temple erected in its name seemed odd, but not completely unheard of.

“What kind of treasure you think a—what’s it called again? A Rakshasa?—a temple dedicated to a Rakshasa has?” Nadine asked.

“Oh, lots. Anyone scared of them and their infamous curses are sure to offer up something valuable in exchange, to try and please them. Sri Lanka used to be a kingdom of them, you know. An island of monsters. Anuradhapura was the old capital. I'm sure that's what got Damon interested," Chloe said, not bothering to hide the sour edge in her tone. “He were here, he'd probably just blast through these passages with bloody dynamite, grab anything worth half a rupee and sell the whole lot on the black market.”

“Aren’t we just going to do the same thing?” asked Nadine.

"China. That hurts,” Chloe teased. Nadine shot her a playful look—she’d been doing that more often, teasing Chloe back—and they both shared a soft chuckle. “ _We_ are going to sell the treasure to someone who cares. Like I said.”

“So, the nearest Ministry of Culture?”

“Why not? Repeat customers, hey? They did love the Tusk of Ganesha. Maybe they even have a rewards program. Hand over enough artifacts, you get a free one back?”

“Right. Damon won’t mind at all.”

“Damon won’t know. We’ll be up and gone before he even books a flight here.” Chloe shrugged. “Plus, just think. If we don’t find anything, then it’s a win-win. We haven’t stolen from Damon, because there’s nothing to steal, see?” She paused. “Or is that a lose-lose?”

“Think I found—" Nadine began, and then something _clunked_.

A scraping sound filled the room. The octogonal walls around them shifted and slid, and suddenly where blank rock had been before, now there were aged, beautiful murals scrawled through with golden-tinted sanskrit writing.

Chloe cautiously approached the closest mural, a painting of a golden deer, the once-vibrant colors faded and flecked. She recognized the sanskrit lettering there, and smiled triumphantly.

“This temple—says here, it’s dedicated to the Rakshasa, Maricha.”

“Maricha?” echoed Nadine, joining her to peer at the mural. “...Is he a deer?”

"No, no. Rakshasas can take any form they want. This is just a disguise. See here,” she pointed at more sanskrit, “this is… it’s a warning, sort of. More like a boast, about Maricha’s great sorcery.” She glanced around, located the correct mural, and approached it. “There he is, our good friend, Maricha.”

Illustrated in chipped paint was a red-skinned monster with horns and bulging eyes. Crooked yellow teeth poked out from between his lips, and his hands were clawed. A tail coiled from his back and the ground around him was littered with red paint—blood.

“Ugly fellow,” said Nadine.

“Well-known fellow,” Chloe corrected. “Probably one of the more famous Rakshasas in Indian mythology.”

Nadine, clearly unfamiliar, looked from one mural to the next—Maricha and another Rakshasa, this one green-skinned (his brother Subahu, Chloe suspected), then several depictions of two men and a woman, another of the golden deer, running this time, then a white, glowing circle surrounding the woman from before, and then the deer again, bleeding out with an arrow in its side.  

“This all belong to another one of your Hindu stories?” Nadine asked, brow puckered in confusion.

“It’s from the Ramayana, one of the most famous texts from India in all of its history, second only to the Mahabharata.”

“How ‘bout you get me up to speed, then? Short version, ja?”

“Right,” said Chloe, hands on hips. She began a slow circle around the room, gesturing to each mural in turn. “So, way back when, there was a Prince. Rama. Everyone loved him. Great guy all around. But his father's second wife—” She winced, stopped. “Short version. Hmm.” She started again, “After a spot of family drama, Rama gets banished to live in the woods for thirteen years.”

“Must’ve been some serious drama,” Nadine added, following her on their circuit of the room.

Chloe went on. “Rama’s wife and brother go with him, right? Well, while they’re in the woods, Ravana,” she pointed to a mural of a leering creature more beast than man with ten heads, “the demon king, sees Rama’s wife—Sita—and is overcome by her beauty, and decides to kidnap her and make her his queen.”

“Romantic,” Nadine cut in blandly. Chloe laughed.

"Right. Now, ‘course, he can’t just waltz up and take her. Rama’s too strong for that. Plus, see here, Sita’s got a circle of protection she stays in where nobody can touch her.” They stopped together at the mural of the woman in the glowing circle before moving on. “So Ravana gets his underling Maricha, here, a mighty Rakshasa, to use his sorcery and turn into a golden deer and wander up to Sita. Sita sees the deer, says, _Oh, look at that beautiful deer. Won’t you catch it for me, Rama?_ So Rama and his brother go after it. The deer runs off, leads them further and further away, and then Ravana swoops in, tricks Sita out of the circle by pretending to be a beggar, and carries her off to his palace on—guess where—Sri Lanka.”

“Shit,” said Nadine, sounding vaguely intrigued.

“Right, well, don’t worry,” Chloe assured, “it doesn’t end well for Ravana and his demons. Rama kills Maricha, see in this one, and then eventually gathers up an army of monkeys—”

Nadine blinked at that. “ _Monkeys?_ ”

Chloe grinned wickedly, husked, “Yeah, you’d like the monkey part, wouldn’t you—so then Rama and his brother and all the monkeys build a bridge from India to Sri Lanka, fight Ravana and all his Rakshasa friends, win, and take back Rama’s wife. The end. Sort of.”

Swiveling her head to once more take in the entirety of the murals surrounding them, Nadine nodded. “Nice enough story. Can see why people were scared of Rakshasas, if they were as strong as you say.” She frowned. “But what do you suppose we should do next, here?”

“Hrmm.” Chloe looked about, curious herself, then stepped toward the center of the room to try and get a better view of everything. Maybe there was a pattern to the murals, or a code in the sanskrit—

A brick beneath her foot slid down with a _thunk_. Chloe froze as the floor groaned and shuddered, but didn’t fall—

“Chloe!” Nadine shouted, on the verge of leaping toward her, to barrel her back toward the wall.

“No, no, wait!” cried Chloe.

—and instead, the floor shifted and at the very center of the room, where Chloe was standing, an altar rose. On it was a single object.

It wasn't treasure, Chloe noticed immediately. It was an old wooden arrow. The fletching was half-fallen off, the metal of the head rusted and dull.

Chloe held her breath, waiting to see if anything else would happen.

“Look!” Nadine hissed suddenly, and Chloe jerked—

When the stone floor had shifted, just a moment ago, the bricks around her feet had rotated, forming a pale white circle. 

Chloe was inside it, along with the altar.

Nadine wasn’t.

“Get in the circle!” Chloe shouted.

Nadine didn’t question it. She jumped.

Not even a second later, spears shot from cracks in the walls at all sides. None of them were long enough to reach the center circle, but if either she or Nadine had been outside the protective ring, peering at the murals or trying to break through the door on the other end, they’d have been skewered right through.

“Shit!” Nadine barreled into Chloe from her charging leap and then clung to her, digging her feet in to arrest her movement, boots skidding on bare stone. Chloe clutched back at her on reflex. For a long moment, they just stood there, safe in the center of a bristling ring of sharp spears.

“You okay?” Chloe breathed out. Her heart was pounding. Against her chest, she could feel Nadine’s racing, too.

“That was just a little too close,” Nadine said shakily, making an admirable attempt at casual. Chloe waited a few beats longer before releasing her partner, glad she was relatively unharmed.

“Think I know why Damon didn’t come any further into the temple,” she groused.

Nadine gave a very weak laugh. They looked about, unsure of their next move.

All around them were sharp, glinting spearheads. Some were rusted or broken, but plenty seemed functional enough to give them a good slice and a moderate amount of tetanus, which meant no trying to thread their way through them to get out—not that they could simply leave back the way they’d come, as the spears were in the way now.

Which left them with the altar and the arrow.

Together, they turned to look at it, shoulders brushing, not wanting to even tempt the circle’s protective ring. Staying inside was their best bet, right now.

“Looks like Maricha’s got another puzzle to solve,” Chloe said.

Nadine jerked her chin at the altar. “What’s that supposed to be, then? The arrow that killed him?”

Chloe eyed it. “Symbolically? Maybe. Suppose you could call it an artifact. Doesn’t look like it’d be worth much, though. Maybe it’s just a key. You know, to get the other door open.” Without thinking, she reached forward to pluck it up from its resting place.

“Well don’t just _pick it up_ —” said Nadine, reaching out to stop her. She grabbed Chloe's wrist with one hand and with the other touched the end of the arrow Chloe was already holding, and—

 

—

 

Nadine woke an indeterminable amount of time later. Her head was throbbing. She was on the floor on her back, limbs akimbo. How long had she been out? It simultaneously felt as though it'd only been seconds, and yet hours. Faintly, she heard a groan, reached out.

“Chloe?” she mumbled, but her own voice sounded strange in her ears. Christ, what had happened? Had something exploded, injured her eardrums? Was it Damon, blasting his way through the temple early like Chloe’d feared? She’d kill him if Chloe was hurt. She’d—

Her vision was swimming. Blinking furiously, she saw that the surrounding spears were gone, retreated back to the hidden cracks in wall. The floor must have shifted again, too, because the circle was similarly missing and Nadine was on the left side of the room now, where Chloe had been standing before.

Chloe, where was Chloe?

She got to her hands and knees, reached out again, touched something warm and solid. Someone’s back. Chloe’s? She gripped at it, fingers feeling odd and clumsy.

“Chloe,” she said again, louder this time. What was wrong with her voice, why did it _sound like that?_

Another groan. The body under her hand stirred. Nadine blinked at it blearily. It was dark and gloomy in the room, some of the torches having sputtered out, but for some reason, Chloe’s shirt didn’t appear so red and garish as before. She even _looked_ different. Her limbs were thicker, hair shorter.

"Chloe?"

Chloe’s head wobbled up, and Nadine saw her face. It—

It was—

She—

It couldn’t—

She looked down at herself, saw a red shirt, and felt her blood turn to ice, a cold sweat springing to her neck and back, stomach clenching in horror.

“China?” came an unsteady voice. _Her_ voice. Nadine’s, not Chloe’s. But it wasn’t Nadine speaking. It—

“No way,” Nadine chanted. “No _fokken_ way. No. No way.”

And out of her mouth came a familiar, purring husk, mangled into a vaguely-sounding South African lilt.

At last, Chloe sat up, blinking at her in an uncertain stupor. Only it wasn’t Chloe’s body, sitting there in front of Nadine. It was her own. Like looking in the mirror. Only, not.

Nadine’s—no, _Chloe’s_ now—jaw dropped.

“Oh, _no_ ,” she gasped. She went utterly still, as though frozen by shock, while Nadine couldn’t seem to stop moving, caught by a feverish urge to bolt. She struggled to her feet—Chloe’s feet—tripped over her own boots—Chloe’s boots—unused to the length and weight of legs that weren’t truly hers—because they were Chloe’s—to the balance of a body entirely unfamiliar to her—Chloe’s, Chloe’s, _Chloe’s_. She fell and landed painfully on her knees and immediately tried to stand again.

“Oh, _fuck me_ ,” Chloe whispered, hands clasped over her mouth. The scar on her throat pulsed as she swallowed again and again, like she was about to be sick. She looked stricken, horrified. It was easy to tell, because Nadine had looked at that goddamn face in the mirror for more than thirty years and had every single emotion for it memorized. And now it wasn’t hers anymore.

 _I’m dreaming_ , Nadine thought. _I’m dreaming, because there is no way this is real._ She cast about, feeling on the edge of panic. The altar was gone, sunk back into the floor. The arrow was on the ground. Or, pieces of it was. Nadine spotted the arrowhead, then a piece of the end with fletching still attached, and snatched it up, as if intent on the impossible task of putting it back together. Holding the pieces, she stormed over to Chloe—still a bit wobbly—and shoved one into her fumbling hand, trying to mimic their actions from earlier, to undo what’d been done.

Nothing.

“ _Fok!_ ” She dashed the worthless pieces to the ground and swore her lungs out so loudly the entire chamber seemed to shake, shouted and shouted until she was hoarse, and then punched the nearest thing—the floor. Her knuckles cracked against the unforgiving stone, coming away scraped and bloody. “Shit!” The pain was ferocious, fiercer than Nadine had expected. Why? Did Chloe’s body have a lower threshold for pain than her own? Did that mean this was real, and not a dream? It—

“Are you okay?” Chloe asked, cutting through her frenzied haze. Though her voice was shaky, she sounded very serious.

But hearing those words, hearing _her own voice speak them_ —

“Of course I’m n—” she snarled.

“I mean, are you hurt anywhere?” Chloe interrupted.

Nadine gave herself a quick once-over through a fresh surge of nausea. To look down and see someone else, to feel sensations from a body that wasn’t hers… She felt like an alien.

“I—no. I’m fine. I mean, you’re fine."

“I… I think you’re alright, too.” Chloe let out a long, shaky breath, her muscular shoulders lowering. Nadine recognized the look on her own face, then. It was fear.

Nadine forced herself to stand still, though the need to act, to move, to just _fokken do something_ was roaring through her veins. The last thing she wanted to do was frighten her partner. This had happened to the both of them, not just her, and from here on, they’d need to work together.

Chloe glanced up at her. Her eyes were wet. A forced, chagrined smile twisted across her mouth. It looked strange on Nadine’s usually stern, blank face. “This is going to get pretty confusing. Let’s just… Just refer to ourselves as the bodies we’re in, right now.”

Nadine swayed.

“I said right now!” Chloe cut in quickly. “As in temporarily!”

“How… How do you know this is temporary?”

“It has to be. This is a Rakshasa we’re talking about. They play tricks, use illusions. They use magic to—to mess with people. They don’t bloody ruin their lives.”

“You sure about that?” Nadine replied. Her life seemed plenty ruined, right about now.

Chloe shook her head. “Look. For the sake of our sanities, this is temporary, alright? So let’s just… Start at the beginning.”

Nadine crouched down on her haunches, facing her, trying to remain calm when really she was terrified. “R-right.”

“I’m in your body,” Chloe said matter-of-factly. “And you’re in mine.”

“Right,” Nadine said again, since she couldn’t think of much else to add to that.

“Okay.” Chloe seemed to run out of steam at that point, slumping again. “Shit. I haven’t the faintest what to do about this.”

“You don’t say,” Nadine snapped, temper getting the better of her.

“At least I’m _trying_ —” Chloe cut back at her, but Nadine shouted,

“We never should have come here in the first place!”

“I know that _now!_ ” cried Chloe.

Suddenly furious again, Nadine stood and once more began to pace. Her scraped hand throbbed. She wanted to punch something, to break something—but she couldn’t, she realized with a guilty flush. This wasn’t her body to ruin, anymore. Shit. Shit!

“Damon must’ve known there was a booby trap,” Chloe announced bitterly. “Let us walk into it on purpose.”

“For all we know,” Nadine added with a snarl, jabbing her finger at the door that’d stopped them earlier, “he’s got the key to this door, too. He just wanted us to clear the way for him. And we _fokken_ did it, because _you_ were too greedy to pass it up. Once a thief, always a thief.”

Nadine should have spoken up, before. Voiced her qualms. Men like Damon—dangerous men with money to back every one of their crooked investments and dark desires—didn’t like to be made a fool. It didn’t matter now if there was treasure to be found or not. If he had the slightest inkling that they’d tried to cheat him, he’d have their heads.

Not that he’d ever touch Chloe while Nadine was still alive. Of that, she could promise.

“Listen,” growled Chloe, and it was actually quite intimidating, with Nadine’s own thunderous frown glaring up at her like that, pinning her in place. “You want to blame me? Fine. But that doesn’t get us out of here. That doesn’t _fix this_.”

“Well, what will?” Nadine shouted.

“ _I don’t know!_ ” Chloe shouted back, and Nadine actually flinched. Chloe looked sorry for a second, and then stood shakily. “I don’t know,” she said, in a steadier tone. “But we’re going to figure it out. Understand?”

Nadine looked away, ashamed by her own volatile reaction. She was supposed to be the level-headed one here. “Fine,” she said quietly.

Chloe nodded, and they regarded one another for a tense moment. Looking at herself, standing there, Nadine felt queasy and afraid and angry and so many other things. She felt a child, lost and alone and wanting to go back home, where it was safe.

“It’s going to be okay,” said Chloe, with that serious edge back in her voice.

Nadine desperately wanted to believe her. “What do we do, Chloe?” she whispered. Her chest felt like it was constricting, making it hard to breathe. “This isn’t—I can’t—”

“You can and you will, Ross, you hear me? You’re the—the strongest bloody woman I know, and we’re going to do this, alright?”

Nadine swallowed thickly and stared at the ground. After a moment, she nodded.

“Good. ...Good.” Chloe studied her for a moment. “Is it really so bad, being stuck in there?” A smile quirked at the corner of her mouth. “I mean, I always did want to have some South African in me, y’know?”

For a beat, Nadine stared at her, speechless.

Then, together, they spluttered into choked, helpless laughter.

“That was _horrible_ ,” Nadine got out.

“S’why I said it, love,” Chloe replied.

Despite herself, Nadine smiled at her. She was glad, at the very least, that she wouldn’t be going through this alone. Chloe smiled back at her, her expression at first unsure, then fierce. She stepped forward and reached out. Nadine copied her. Their hands met. Squeezed.

“We got this, Ross,” Chloe said firmly.

Nadine still felt a bit uncertain. She couldn’t help it. “Maybe you should call Drake, just to—”

“No!” Chloe cut in so suddenly Nadine almost jumped. The hand in hers gave a harsh yank. “We are not telling _anyone_ about this, got it?”

“Could use all the help we can get, Frazer,” Nadine scoffed back, their hands releasing and falling back to their sides. “I mean, look at us.”

“We tell Nate or Sam about this, I will _never_ live it down. They’ll hound me about this to my deathbed—”

“But what if—”

“Do you _really_ want a _Drake_ to know we got stuck in each other’s bodies? _Really_ , Nadine?”

Nadine stopped. Imagined it, for a moment. And then shivered, her stomach twisting into a cold ball.

“...Good point.”

“Glad you see it my way.” A mischievous light appeared in Chloe’s eyes. “Now, do me a favor, will you, love, and turn around?”

“Why?”

“Because I want to see how my arse looks in those jeans.”

 

—

 

The answer was, of course: bloody  _fantastic_.

Thirty-nine years old, and Chloe Frazer could definitely still get it. Nadine hadn’t deigned to comment, but Chloe knew. After all, it was right there in front of her, wasn't it?

This was, in her opinion, far from the worst that could’ve happened in that temple. So far, it seemed more of an inconvenience than anything. Sure it was strange, being in someone else’s body, but an arm was an arm and a leg was a leg, and they all worked the same, didn’t they? Easy.

Then she started breaking things.

“Shit!” said Chloe, for about the ninth time since they’d switched. She’d, yet again, and _completely by accident_ , broken another “delicate” piece of their field equipment. This time, it was her trusty pair of pocket-binoculars.

She’d been up in a tree, ‘bout thirty twenty off the ground, binoculars raised to her squinting eyes, tracing the seam of a deep gully, trying in vain to spot their “rented” 4x4 through the thick Sri-Lankan brush—“Not like there’s a handy button I can press that’ll just show us where the jeep is, love”—and had been trying to make the bloody thing zoom in and turned the dials too hard, snapping the plastic in two places and rendering their field tool rather inoperable.

Whoops.

She made a face, then scooted carefully back down the tree to where Nadine was waiting with an irritated expression, arms crossed beneath her breasts. Chloe got a rush of deja vu, seeing herself standing there, but knowing it wasn’t, not really, and stumbled on her dismount to the ground, but luckily didn’t fall over on her face—it’d be a shame to bruise it up, since it was Nadine’s and all. She was a bit partial to it.

“Sorry,” she said, handing the now useless binoculars over to Nadine, who just sighed and put it back into its customary place in Chloe’s belt pack, to go with their now similarly broken plastic compass and GPS tracker, among other things.

“Be more careful,” Nadine replied sternly, and Chloe couldn’t help but flinch and feel guilty.

It was difficult, she’d come to realize, having to estimate exactly how much force to use on stupidly delicate little objects like that when you didn’t even quite know exactly how strong you were. It wasn’t every day she got a new body, after all. Or, well. Switched one.

“Sorry,” she said again, because she was, and she did feel poorly about—well, not just about the binoculars, but about _everything_. Maybe one day, they could look back on this and smile. Or Nadine could tell her mother a story about it, and then they could all have a laugh.

Really, she was beginning to think India had it out for her. So much for a take-two with her Father-country. More like a first-round knockout.

Chloe, at least, hadn’t broken Nadine’s watch, the device still strapped safely around her wrist, so Nadine made Chloe take it off— _gently_ —and then checked it, sighted the sun’s descent, and determined which way was north, which should be the direction they left the jeep in. They headed off through the brush at a fast clip, trudging doggedly, silent and sulky.

Well, Nadine more than her, but whatever.

After a while, they took a break, though Chloe wasn’t sure why. She felt fine. Not even winded in the slightest. Could probably do laps of the entire island and then still lift a truck.

Still, when Nadine stopped and sat on a rock for a breather, she stopped too, and realized that although she'd been gifted Nadine's borderline inhuman stamina and physical endurance, Nadine was having to deal with her own, somewhat weaker body in return. So. Another thing that was her fault, then.

“I don’t know how you always have your hair like this,” Nadine complained suddenly, raking her fingers through the long black tangle of Chloe’s half-undone ponytail, mussed across her damp temples and neck from branches and the like. “It’s driving me crazy.”

Probably not the only thing driving her crazy at the moment, just what she’d chosen to currently hyper-focus on. Chloe, who was used to having thick tendrils of hair stuck to her sweaty neck and dangling over her nose, just shrugged. “Need help?” she offered, because she really didn’t want Nadine to ruin her hair too much, what with all that yanking. Bloody shame she couldn’t feel it, either. Been a while, since her hair last had a good yank.

Story for another time, though.

In answer, Nadine simply stood and gave another sigh, and then put her hands peevishly on her hips as Chloe stepped up behind her, pulled the elastic from her hair, and began to gather it back up, a little tidier this time.

“You’ll have to brush my hair every day, twice a day,” she said as she worked. “Five hundred strokes each time—”

“Very funny, Frazer.”

Chloe chuckled, finishing up as best she could. She looked herself over—there was that deja vu again—and then nodded, satisfied, and pointed at her own head. “How’s mine? I mean… yours, or whatever?”

Nadine flicked her eyes over—like Chloe, she didn’t seem to like looking at her misplaced body—and shrugged. “It’s fine. Let’s go, already.”

“Hold on. That elastic won’t hold forever, my hair’s too thick for that. I think I have some bobby pins in my pocket—”

“Really, Frazer?” said Nadine, pulling them free. “Looking for some locks to pick in a few-thousand-year-old tomb?”

“Never say I’m not prepared,” said Chloe, and took them. She twirled her finger, so Nadine would turn back around, then started plucking at her ponytail, trying to pin up the worst of it.

“Making me a braid or something? Hurry it up.”

“No, I just—oh, goddammit!” In her hands, a bobby pin snapped like nothing.

Nadine glanced back at her. “Chloe— _eish_.”

“Shit! Why do I keep doing that?”

“It’s fine,” Nadine said.

“Guess I don’t know my own strength,” Chloe joked. “Or, yours, I suppose.” She placed her last bobby pin with extreme care, then said, “Done.”

Afterwards, she experimentally raised and flexed her left arm, feeling the pull and swell as the corded muscles there bunched and bulged, veins in her forearm and wrist pulsing faintly. “ _Christ_ , you’re strong,” she said, neglecting to disguise the sheer awe in her voice. To look at Nadine’s glorious muscles was one thing. To actually, viscerally feel them? Entirely different. “How d’you do it?” she asked.

Nadine frowned at her. It made for a strange image—Chloe’s body, standing there, with Chloe’s face all puckered up in a sour scowl, black hair slicked back into a tight, efficient ponytail. Chloe couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn it like that. Grade School, maybe. “Do what?”

Chloe lowered her arm, feeling as her muscles uncoiled and loosened. “Not bloody hurt everyone or break everything you touch.”

“It’s not that hard,” Nadine huffed, looking embarrassed. “Just have to be careful, I guess.”

Chloe kept thinking about that, as they trudged off again through the brush, heading north. How many things did Nadine have to take care touching, or handling, with such strength at her disposal? How many times, exactly, had she touched another person—or Chloe, specifically—over the past ten or so months they’d been working together, and never hurt her in the slightest? What kind of rigid discipline did that take? Never mind the determination, the dedicated focus?

Christ, it was almost—well, romantic wasn’t the word. Swoon-worthy was a bit closer. If—

Something in the bushes in front of them rustled.

Instantly, Nadine reacted—her hand jerked and went to her belt, but it was Chloe’s belt, and the gun she’d expected to find wasn't there, because Chloe didn’t keep a gun on her person unless absolutely necessary.

Without conscious thought, Chloe found herself reacting in identical fashion—her left hand snapped down to her hip and withdrew Nadine’s trusty Para .45 so fast she didn’t realize what she was doing. In the space of a single breath, her arms came up—elbows firm but not locked, one palm on the grip, the other cupped beneath the butt of the gun for support—and sighted straight down the barrel at the bushes with laser-like intensity.

A bird burst out of the foliage and took flight.

Chloe stood for a moment in complete shock.

“Jesus,” she said. “Did you  _see that?_ ”

“Ja,” said Nadine, looking confused, yet slightly proud. “Muscle memory, I think?”

And, wow. That’d been—she knew Nadine was a dangerous woman, but that was so automatic, so smooth… It’d required no thought at all, just motion. If she didn’t know Nadine any better, she’d be scared.

Instead, she was absurdly turned on.

Best to keep _that_ tidbit to herself, though, 'specially since she wasn't exactly in charge of her own... accommodations. She was more of a renter at the moment, and not an owner.

"Let's keep on," said Nadine, and Chloe followed her without comment.

A bit later, she started noticing a strange feeling growing in her chest.

It started when they were climbing over a jutting wall of moss-flecked stone—Nadine sent Chloe scrambling up first, then commanded her to catch and pull her up as she took a running leap. Chloe'd balked initially, then remembered just how strong she was now, and how easily Nadine had always hauled her up cliffs or ropes. Putting trust in her partner's body, she waited at the ready, poised atop the shelf of towering stone, and caught Nadine smartly 'round the outstretched wrist as she jumped. With just a single, powerful surge, she hefted her partner with ease, then realized a second later she'd used _too_ much strength, overshooting the lip of the rock, and had to quickly catch her before she dropped again. She grabbed Nadine around the waist and jerked them both back with force, tripping and falling backwards onto her arse. Nadine collapsed against her, suddenly in her lap, eyes wide from the few seconds of dead air she'd just been subjected to, then, surprisingly, began to laugh.

Soon as Chloe was steady enough, she started laughing too. "Sorry, Ross. I swear I'll get better at this."

"Sure." Nadine smiled at her then. It was fast, and disappeared a moment later, but the sight of it—warm, sincere, affectionate—brought a tight spasm to Chloe's chest. She went still, thinking maybe she'd injured herself, pulled something, but then it faded, and Nadine was getting to her feet and brushing off her pants, then helped Chloe stand too, and they continued on.

Feeling just got worse, though, from there. It was a squeezing of the guts, a tension that stretched from belly to ribs to sternum. Chloe couldn't say why it'd started, then. Or maybe it’d always been there, since the start, the switch, and it’d only just now become apparent. It felt like a feverish sort of sickness with a side of the spins, but not so bad she couldn’t walk. Strange thing was, she noticed, it got worse the closer she stood to her partner.

When she tripped over a jutting branch, five minutes later, and Nadine caught her by the arm—without the strength to really hold her up, sure, spilling them both to one knee in the mud, but it was the thought that mattered, here—the feeling mounted even further.

Finally, it got aggravating enough she thought to mention it.

“I don’t feel so good,” she said bluntly, when they paused to sip from their canteens, taking respite in the shade of a copse of trees. Nadine had sworn if they didn’t find the jeep soon, they’d just head toward water and _swim_ back to the Indian mainland.

At once, Nadine looked alarmed. “You—you think it’s from whatever happened to us?”

“Not sure,” Chloe admitted. “Were you feeling sick earlier today, before we...?”

“No. Don’t think so, anyways. Why, what’s wrong?”

Chloe puts her hands on narrow hips, her canvas trousers rough under her knuckles, and took a breath. “Well. My head hurts, but that’s a given. My—or, your—stomach is… it feels sort of knotted up. And my chest feels a little, like, tight, maybe? I feel hot, too. Shaky. But, see, it’s funny. When I’m near you, it’s worse. So maybe it’s part of the—the curse, or whatever you want to call this.”

Nadine looked at her blankly for a long moment, and then, for some reason, paled.

“That’s normal,” she said quickly, and looked away, taking a big gulp from her canteen.

“Normal?" Chloe guffawed. "How is that normal? It feels awful!”

“It’s normal, Frazer,” Nadine insisted. “You’re fine.”

“I’m not fine, it feels like—”

“Have you really never been nervous before?” Nadine cut in.

Chloe gawked for a moment. Her? _Nervous?_ Honestly, probably not. She’d always had a reckless edge to her that nerves simply couldn’t curb. “Why would I be feeling _nervous?_ ” she said slowly, confused.

Then it hit a moment later— _she_ wasn’t nervous. Nadine’s body was.

And it wasn’t reacting to what’d happened back in that temple. It was reacting to the nearness of _Chloe’s_ body.

Nadine clipped Chloe’s canteen back to her belt and wiped her mouth. “Let’s get go—”

“I make you nervous?” Chloe blurted, incredulous.

Nadine went still. Again, she looked away from Chloe. “Look, let’s just—”

“No, really. Are you nervous around me?” Even saying it aloud sounding incredibly stupid. Chloe couldn’t grasp it. Nadine Ross couldn’t be nervous. Not about anything. She was, essentially, a female Terminator. She jumped on trains and had probably killed more men in her lifetime than Chloe dared consider. Why would someone like _Chloe Frazer_ make her nervous?

Nadine spun around. She had that panicked look back in her eyes, with an undercurrent of anger. “We’re getting back to the jeep,” she said in a low growl. “I don’t want to talk about anything else other than that. Understand? Let’s go.” And then she marched off.

Confused and not a little lost—Nadine Ross? _Nervous?_ Around _her?—_ Chloe could do nothing but follow.

 

—

 

“ _Jesus_ ,” Nadine unleashed in a groan, by the time they’d finally reached their jeep, another two hours later. Without the GPS or compass, they’d gotten turned around more than once, and found themselves forced to push a brutal pace and climb perilous outcrops and cliffs rather than turn back before they began to lose the dwindling daylight even further. Being stuck out in the Sri Lankan jungle overnight without shelter was _not_ an option.

Now, sprawled out under the thankfully-canvas-covered roof of the jeep’s cramped back seat, Nadine had never been so beat in her life. Her feet throbbed in her boots, and her hands were cramped and numb from so much climbing. She’d been nervous, earlier, approaching that first sheer wall, but she was in Chloe’s more experienced body, after all, and the climb had been remarkably easier than she’d thought. Chloe had been the one struggling then, stuck following up after her in Nadine’s less-adapted body. They’d had to go slow, and help each other.

“You alright back there, china?” Chloe asked from the driver’s seat, where she was checking their maps and eating a protein bar, looking no worse for wear from their trek, other than some sweat at the neck of her shirt and more shining on her brow. Already, Nadine missed her far more physically efficient body terribly. Chloe was better equipped for vertical traversal and speed, but endurance… Not her strong point.

“How do you do it?” she asked, and wondered if this was how Chloe had felt, earlier today, marveling at Nadine’s brute strength.

“What’s that, love?”

“My knees hurt. My back hurts. I don’t think I could move my arms even if I wanted to. I want to just… Just lay here and take a nap.”

Chloe laughed sharply. “Yup, that sounds like me, alright.” She took another bite of the protein bar, said thoughtfully, “I feel grand. Just so you know.” She pointedly didn’t mention the nervousness from before. Nadine was pathetically grateful. She could only handle one thing at a time, right now.

“I just didn’t realize, I guess,” she went on, staring up at the jeep’s canvas roof, listening to the tired cries of her borrowed body.

"Realize what?”

“How much harder it is for you, doing these sorts of things.”

Chloe harrumphed. “Right. Sorry we can’t all be Bionic Woman.”

“That’s not what I meant. I know I’m younger, but—”

“Oh please,” Chloe interrupted. “I’m not _that_ much older than you.”

“No, Chloe, don’t you see?” Nadine sat up, despite her groaning muscles. Chloe ignored her, studiously focusing on their map. “You _are_ stronger than me.”

Chloe was quiet for a moment. Then, “How’s that?”

“Because you feel like this—tired and sore and beat up—every time we go out in the field and push ourselves to breaking, and you... you still do it. You just… You never give up.”

Chloe glanced back at her over her shoulder, the guarded look on her face melting. Probably, she could see the guilt building in Nadine’s eyes, and knew what Nadine was thinking of, what she was kicking herself for now—all the times Nadine had pushed them harder, longer, faster, thinking Chloe could handle it like she did, that a little pain didn’t matter, not knowing how hard it’d been for the other woman.

But Chloe had handled it, in the end, hadn't she? She was tougher than Nadine could ever be.

“Don’t you worry about me, Ross,” Chloe said, voice soft. “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

“We’re partners,” Nadine protested. “We should be taking care of each other.”

Chloe continued to study the map, though her ears had gone a little red. Nadine felt awkward, but sat staunchly through it, refusing to take it back. After another minute, Chloe finished her protein bar and then started the jeep.

“Care to join me up front, love?” she asked casually, and despite her aching body, Nadine immediately hopped between the seats and settled into the passenger seat with a light grunt.

“You sure you’ll be able to drive?” she challenged.

“Ex- _cuse_ me?” Chloe replied.

“Technically, I’m you. Maybe _I_ should drive.”

Chloe narrowed her eyes at her. “I’m _me_ , and _I_ drive. So _you_ just be quiet.”

Wanting to laugh but stifling the urge, Nadine simply sat back and tried to enjoy the ride.

“Tell you what,” Chloe said, ten minutes later, as they bounced about on what could barely be called a road, twin ruts leading them back towards civilization, and hopefully a boat. “First thing I’m doing once we’re back is finding a mirror. Then I’m just gonna flex at it for about an hour. No, two.”

Nadine groaned in protest. “ _Eish_ , Frazer. Really?”

“Really. Then I’m gonna eat all the ice cream I can without getting sick.”

Nadine groaned again, but it was weaker now. She’d grown almost too tired to care. The thudding of potholes and rocks was lulling her into a fatigue-ridden stupor. “You are _not._ ”

“Yes, I am! Your metabolism must be so much faster than mine! I'll never get another chance like this!”

Now Nadine sighed, and propped her head on a fist, elbow on the door.

“What, don’t believe me, Ross? I’ll do it. I will.”

“No, just…” Nadine rolled her eyes. She was sleepy, her body falling heavier and heavier into the seat. She yawned. “Just can’t believe _that’s_ what you’d do with it. With me.”

Chloe laughed. “What, did you expect me to say something else?”

Nadine jerked when they jounced over a particularly nasty root and sat up, suddenly wide awake. What had she just blundered into? “No,” she said quickly.

“Oh, it was something else, alright,” husked Chloe, grinning wickedly. To see such an expression on her own face was extremely disconcerting for Nadine. “Something _dirty_ , wasn’t it.”

“Shut up.”

“Hey, listen, don’t worry,” Chloe said suddenly, with all seriousness. “This is your body. I’m not gonna do anything bad to it. I promise, alright?”

Feeling a combination of grateful, reassured, and relieved, Nadine nodded. “Me too.”

“Good.” Chloe turned back to the road, navigating a small stream with skill. “...Can I _look_ at it, at least?”

Nadine felt herself flush. “ _Eish_. Stop talking.”

“If I take a shower, I’m gonna have to. Just saying.”

“Can you just drive?”

“Alright, Ross, have it your way,” Chloe gave in. "Next stop, Anuradhapura."

 

—

 

Half a day later, they were back on the Indian mainland. A plan for Damon’s inevitable return to the island had been drawn up. Another plan dedicated solely to themselves had taken far more time. Chloe had argued herself hoarse. Her first instinct was for them to stick together. Eventually, however, it was decided it'd be best to part, go to their respective homes, and pretend as though all was normal. Nadine was the one to come up with that gem. They went back and forth over it, then finally reached an agreement, neither of them happy with the result. Nadine relayed several times during the boat ride back to the mainland just how much she hated it. 

For the record, Chloe hated it, too. But she hated, more than that, just how necessary it was. Still felt wrong, though. Like leaving each other to the metaphorical wolves.

They swapped phones. Chloe felt an almost physical pain, giving hers over. Couldn't even look at Nadine's, just stuffed it into her back pocket and tried not to bloody cry about it.

Taxi to the airport was quiet. Tense. Each of them stared out their respective windows, as though not sure what to say. Something so feeble as mere words couldn't hope to fill what'd been breached on that island, it seemed.

Once they'd gotten through security and made their way to their first gate—Chloe's flight was in an hour, Nadine's boarding in less than ten minutes—they stopped, and faced one another at last.

Chloe took a long look at herself, and her partner, dwelling somewhere within, just beneath the surface. Nadine looked lost, clutching her ticket for London in her fist. She’d never been. Chloe felt much the same, holding her own for South Africa. She couldn’t even speak Afrikaans. She’d never visited Nadine’s apartment.

Christ, how were they ever going to pull this off? It seemed impossible, looking at it now.

"Might be weird," Chloe spoke up, feeling unsure, "but can I have a hug, maybe?"

Nadine looked surprised, some of the tension draining from her face. She stepped forward. They clashed at first—Chloe was used to putting her arms down around Nadine's waist, while Nadine always put her 'cross Chloe's shoulders—but now that their bodies were different, they had to do the opposite. They adapted quickly, and then they were hugging tightly.

“Listen,” said Chloe into Nadine's shoulder. “Maybe we should text Sam.” Nadine gave a surprised jolt, and Chloe pulled away to quickly add, “I don't mean to tell him about—you know. Just... We need some help. Agreed?"

Reluctantly, her face strained but resigned, Nadine nodded. "Fine," she grumbled.

"If he does come, set him up in the guest room, okay? Just… try to get along with him.”

Looking so unsure it nearly broke Chloe’s heart, Nadine nodded again, tucking an escaped strand of long black hair behind her ear. “Ja. I’ll try.”

“Good.”

After a few more minutes, a call went out for Nadine’s flight to board. Nadine took a visible breath and picked up Chloe's one luggage bag, muttering, "See you soo—"

Chloe seized her by the arm before she could walk away and hugged her partner fiercely for a second time. It only took a moment for Nadine to hug her back, just as hard. For the first time since they'd switched, Chloe didn't worry about accidentally hurting her partner. Feeling the softness and warmth of her own body pressed against her was strange, but Chloe didn’t let go. A lump grew in her throat.

 _Just look what you’ve gotten yourself into now_ , she thought to herself. _You stupid dickhead_.

It hurt, but she released Nadine, who smiled at her. She looked a bit more together, now. Stronger. More herself, which, really, made no sense at all, considering their situation.

She held out her hand, and Chloe immediately took it.

“We’ve got this, Frazer,” Nadine said, with a conviction that raced through Chloe’s veins like fire.

“We do, Ross,” Chloe replied. “We do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can these dumbasses stop getting cursed already jesus I'm tired of writing 20k+ fics for them this one nearly killed me


	3. NOW

Damon Mathers, Nadine decides with sincere and unmitigated authority, is a _prick_.

He swaggers about the surrounding temple grounds, barking orders at his men—two dozen or so thuggish looking brutes with a combined IQ of the low hundreds—threatening a small team of local Sri Lankans—most likely the ones responsible for guiding Damon and his men through the worst of the thick jungle to the forefront of the long-hidden temple—and generally throwing his weight around like a genuine school-yard bully—he’s a big man, Damon, thick-necked and strong-looking yet somehow studious, like Asav, over six foot and too handsome for his own good (unless you’re into that. Nadine sure isn’t). Watching him, Nadine is reminded of yet another prick she’s worked with, not terribly long ago—Rafe Adler.

There are some marked differences, however. Damon doesn’t quite have Rafe’s fortune to play with or the manpower such money can afford to employ, but he does retain all the cockiness and blather of the younger man, as well as more recklessness than Rafe ever had. There is a reason it took so long for Rafe to find Avery’s treasure—he was too worried about dying to really put himself at risk. It was only after both Drake brothers got involved that he lost his cool and made the sincere mistake of getting on Nadine’s bad side.

The man Nadine squints at now through her (newly bought) pair of field binoculars seems to have no such reservations—he may be smart, and ruthless in having his way, but he is still greedy and over confident, a man who is used to always getting what he wants.

That’s how Nadine knows they can beat him.

Lying belly-down on her elbows beside her, sprawled out on the wet jungle floor of a low ridge they’ve planted themselves on for a spot of recon, Chloe is listening hard to their one-way radio, the speaker practically glued to her ear, face screwed up in concentration. The faint, staticky chatter of the men in the distance is mostly restricted to talk about supplies, what goes in what vehicle, instructions for setting up a base of operations near the temple entrance, and survey teams being divvied up into members.

Damon’s not the only one with bugs at his disposal now. Nadine and Chloe have gotten their hands on some, courtesy of some shady connections of Chloe’s. They’ve hidden them all around the temple site—as well as placing several on choice pieces of Damon’s field equipment—and so far Damon and his men have been none the wiser.

Nadine finds the irony deeply satisfying. Knowing there were bugs in her apartment—one of the very few safe havens she has in her line of work—irked her beyond reproach. Now, they’ll see how Damon likes some listening in. Before he can even plan his next move, _they’ll_ have the jump on _him_.

Not only that—Chloe’s gotten in contact with a friend of a friend, a man named Zip who works for a reputed adventurer ( _thief_ , Nadine still tends to call it). Zip is supposedly an aficionado when it comes to electronics, hacking and spyware, and owes Chloe several favors, which she’s cashed in recently. Now, thanks to Zip, Damon’s personal cellphone and laptop are both hacked, along with those of his two lieutenants. This means any calls, texts, or e-mails Damon or his men send and receive, she and Chloe will have access to. It’s a step up, a level of surveillance Damon had attempted with the two of them yet failed to achieve, before.

Though, currently, _before_ is still _before_ ; they’re still switched.

But not for much longer, Nadine dares to hope.

 

—

 

She got nervous, waiting for Chloe at the airport in southern India. Her own flight from London had been uneventful. Long and grating, but she slept through part of it, at least. Spent the rest of the time trying to read some paperback bestseller she’d bought on a whim before boarding. The words just made her sick, though, and more jittery than before, so she'd stopped not long after.

Once she landed, she found the arrivals board, and sat down to wait another two hours for Chloe’s flight to arrive. The mere prospect of seeing her—not just Nadine’s own body, terribly missed over the past two weeks, but Chloe herself, her partner, who’d gone through this trial just as she had, every step of the way, who hadn’t given up or gone rogue or any other stupid thing someone else might’ve done in a blundering panic—had been daunting, to say the least, and with every minute gone by, she’d grown more and more tense.

The waiting stretched on and on. After a while, she forced herself to eat at a terminal cafe—sadly, they didn’t have pizza, and the food was spicier than she preferred, but still good, despite her shrinking appetite—nerves fraying all the while. The airport was busy; gates crowded, overhead speakers blaring, bleary-faced travelers milling about like zombies.

At last, Chloe’s plane landed. Through the windows, Nadine watched it taxi up to the proper gate with a knot in her chest, and waited impatiently as weary plane-goers trudged slowly into the terminal. Thirty seconds later, she felt something—a spark, a _pull_ —and had a profound sense of deja vu as she saw her own body walking out of the gate hallway, military-green duffel in hand.

Chloe.

Chloe looked straight at her. Their eyes met. An enormous smile lit up Chloe’s face. Nadine felt a powerful charge of energy arc through them both, connecting them, and then, quite suddenly, felt herself flush, for no reason. Cutting through the foot traffic, Chloe came up to her with an obvious eagerness, like a child approaching a puppy, excited with the prospect of petting it.

“Hey, stranger,” she said softly, and Nadine felt herself responding to that voice— _her_ voice—the deep vowels and consonants curled into a British-Australian drawl. Christ, it was good to see her. Hear her. She looked good, overall. Strong. Her face was clear, no darkness or doubt lingering in her eyes.

She looked… The word escaped her for a moment, and then it came. She looked _ready._

Hoping she looked even a fraction of the same, Nadine returned the smile, gave her a quick up and down. “Hey. You look good, Frazer.”

Chloe’s grin immediately grew playful. “You mean _you_ look good, right?” She flexed an arm, as if to drive the point home, biceps bunching, hard as stone. Clearly, she’d been keeping up with Nadine’s rigorous exercise regimens. A trivial matter, when it all boiled down, but Nadine still appreciated the effort. “If I never have to lift another pair of weights after this, I’ll die a happy woman.”

“I’ve been following your routine, too. I’m napping every day now, just like you said,” Nadine assured lightly, knowing it would make Chloe laugh. It did, and her partner eyed herself appreciatively.

“Looks like all my parts are still attached, at least. Thanks for keeping me in one piece, love.”

“Ja.”

They fell quiet and simply regarded one another for a long moment. Then Chloe came forward—something Nadine had anticipated and even hoped for—and they hugged, clinging to each other for a few endless, drawn-out seconds. For the first time in weeks, Nadine felt a bit at peace. She smelled her own comforting scent, felt the solid hardness of her own body—she could tell Chloe had grown used to how much pressure and force her much-stronger body should exert so as not to accidentally hurt her—and missed it terribly, missed _herself_ so much it hurt, deep inside her chest. She could imagine Chloe felt the same.

“Hope we get fixed soon,” Chloe mumbled into Nadine’s shoulder, her breath fanning out warmly against Nadine’s shirt. “Get back to our old selves, yeah?”

“Ja,” Nadine replied, voice just the slightest bit warbly. She cleared her throat, took a moment to get herself together.

Chloe pulled away slightly, quirked an eyebrow. “I mean, look what you’ve done to my bloody hair.”

A short, loud laugh burst from Nadine’s mouth. She’d done Chloe’s long black locks up in a strict, militaristic french braid, every strand accounted for and pinned properly in place. Chloe, meanwhile, had let Nadine’s natural hair hang loose and free, the thick, bouncy curls brushing her neck and nape, tickling the tops of her shoulders.

“You want to talk about hair, Frazer—if we get fixed, I’m the one who’s going to have to deal with whatever mess you make out of mine, during all this.”

“ _When_ we get fixed. And it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make,” Chloe replied, and combed a hand through the springy curls a few times with visible delight. “You know I love the way you look with your hair down, china. I couldn’t resist.” Before Nadine could think of a response to that—not that she could, actually, think of one—Chloe’s eyes flicked down, and the smile on her face grew soft and sweet. “You wore red, I see,” she said, sounding pleased.

Nadine looked down, unnecessarily reminded of her own sacrifice—namely that of proper camouflage in the Sri Lankan jungle when a gunfight is possible, if not imminent. “It’s your color, after all,” she joked. She was grateful Chloe had stuck with a black shirt and brown cargo pants with Nadine’s usual pair of combat boots for herself.

“Least I could do,” Chloe said. Another plane unboarded nearby, and a surge pushed through the crowd. Nadine grabbed Chloe by the hand before they could get separated. As they walked together toward the airport entrance, Nadine waited for Chloe to let go. When she didn’t, Nadine felt too put-upon to mention it, and so they just kept walking, hand-in-hand, their calluses scratchy against one another’s, grip loose yet somehow firm.

It was… nice.

Once they were outside, hailing for a taxi, Nadine noticed Chloe’s hand in hers had gone clammy. Not only that, her face seemed slightly flushed.

“Alright, Frazer?” she asked.

Chloe looked away, and finally pulled her hand free from Nadine’s, propping it on her hip with a false air of casualness. “Fine.”

Nadine hesitated, about to press further, then stopped. Probably, Chloe was feeling that same, sickly side of nervousness she had two weeks ago, back when they’d first switched places; the squeezing, squirming sensation of anxiety when their bodies were too close. Two weeks' separation meant it'd be worse, now. She hoped Chloe wouldn’t bring it up again, wouldn’t try to make Nadine tell her why she was nervous around her. Their time apart had not made her any more ready for that conversation than before. In fact, now was probably worse. 

Right, so, focus on the plan ahead, then.

Odds were, Damon had hands and eyes hidden everywhere near the island of Sri Lanka, including larger ports and airports on the Indian coast, which was why she and Chloe had flown to a location further inland than before. It also meant hiring commercial boats were out, as were any chartered flights that kept records; digital, written or otherwise. Perhaps if they had pseudonyms or fake IDs it could work, but Chloe had what she claimed to be a far better—and cheaper—idea by the name of Victor Sullivan. According to her, “Air Sully” was their next best bet, and a quick, off-the-books ride to the island sounded far better than a swim to Nadine, so she’d agreed. Still, she was somewhat wary Victor would be able to tell something was off about them, then figured if she’d gotten this far with tricking Samuel, then hopefully Victor wouldn’t be much harder, though she wasn’t ready to bet on it.

Their ride over to the hidden, unnamed port on the coast was quiet. Tense. Halfway there, Chloe sighed and slumped against her in the cab’s backseat. She seemed suddenly weary, though Nadine knew it was simply the calm before the storm, the short but familiar ritual of utter calm her body usually experienced just before a hard fight. Chloe's hair brushed her shoulder. Nadine smelled herself—clean, a familiar mixture of soft shampoo and crisp deodorant.

“I missed you,” Nadine found herself saying all of a sudden, so quietly she was almost sure Chloe wouldn’t hear her over the traffic. But then Chloe went stiff against her shoulder and sat rigidly upright once more, as if strangely embarrassed.

After a minute, she heard a soft reply; “Missed you too, china.”

They didn’t have to wait long at the tiny port before a loud drone broke through the silence hanging between them. Together, they watched as Victor’s Grumman Goose seaplane, the “Hog Wild,” dropped from the clouds and made a slow, steady descent to the calm, bright blue Indian ocean. It puttered toward the dock and shuddered to a halt a few moments later.

The hatch swung open and Victor emerged. Out of the corner of her eye, Nadine saw a huge smile light up Chloe’s face, and felt a jag of fear—Chloe was in _her_ body, and Nadine Ross would never look that happy to see a man known for working with a pair of brothers she despised. Quickly, though, Chloe caught herself, and wiped the smile away, trading it for a strained, neutral expression. Nadine felt badly—Chloe probably missed her friend a good deal. That she couldn’t greet him as she always did must be difficult.

For her part, Nadine was forced to smile and run up to the man for a requisite bearhug, only keeping contact for a few scant seconds before pulling away. Most likely, Chloe hugged her friends for far longer, but that was about as much as Nadine could handle. It would simply have to be good enough.

“Sully!” she said in a warm tone, trying her best to appear pleased. “Thanks for meeting us here, mate. You’re a lifesaver.”

“No problem, sweetheart,” said Victor, raising an unlit cigar to his mouth. He proffered an open hand to Chloe. “Nadine. Good to see you again.”

Chloe faltered just the smallest bit, her expression wavering. Then it hardened, and she shook her friend’s hand with starkly aloof professionalism, and said, “Same here.”

Victor paused then, eyes narrowed. He glanced down at his hand, still shaking “Nadine’s”, then looked over at “Chloe.” “Hrmm,” he said.

Nadine felt a fresh burst of trepidation. Shit. Had they really already been found out? They’d barely spoken a dozen words!

But Victor didn’t press. He simply finished shaking Chloe’s hand, and then told them both to, “Get the hell in already!” in a rough, joking tone.

Take-off was smooth, Victor’s experience behind the controls showing with the ease it took him to reach an appropriate altitude of cloud cover, so Damon, who would probably hear the plane approaching the island, would hopefully not actually see where they landed.

They circled Sri Lanka once from just beneath the clouds. It looked surprisingly small from their height, Nadine noticed. How deceptive. On one side of the island was what looked to be a cargo seaplane parked by a busy port, big enough it was easily visible.

“That’s Damon’s,” said Victor through the radio in their headsets.

Nadine studied it as best she could. Not big enough for a tank or an APC, at least, but definitely room for more than a few men, and some vehicles and equipment besides. Still, it wasn’t an actual army—she and Chloe had had enough of those in India, during their hunt for the Tusk.

Victor landed them smoothly in a hidden cove, promising to wait for their return in what they hoped would only be a day or two.

She and Chloe grabbed their things and, as planned, forgoing a larger city like Anuradhapura, hoofed it to the same small town they’d frequented when they first visited the island, two weeks ago. As per Chloe’s previous arrangements, the jeep they’d rented before was again made available to them—no doubt at another enormous cost of rupees, enough that Chloe announced as they left that _the damn thing was pretty much hers now_ , and was already stocked with supplies like food, maps, gear, rope, and ammunition for their pistols.

That evening they drove as deep into the Sri Lankan jungle as possible. Questioning the locals before they headed out, Chloe had deduced Damon and his men were approaching the temple in their own convoy of trucks, though their going was far slower, hampered by their excess of… well, everything. Though he’d arrived yesterday, she and Nadine should arrive before them on the temple grounds.

Having actual working GPS equipment made finding the temple once again much easier than before. Soon as they got close enough to see the actual structure in the distance—an outcrop of old, puckered stone poking out of the dense jungle foliage a good 2-3 kilometers away—they parked the jeep under the wide canopy of a banyan tree and got to work setting themselves up for a lengthy stakeout. It could be hours or even days before Damon entered the temple, though Nadine was halfway sure he’d simply bash his way through the chambers in his impatient quest for gold and riches, while Chloe was convinced that although he knew one trap had already been tripped, he would be more wary of others, and would take his time exploring the rest of the area.

They picked a spot on a high ridge, perfect for surveillance and an inevitable quick hike down to reach the temple themselves, and then began to wait.

And, so, here they are now. Waiting. _Again_.

Nadine hates waiting, she decides, more than anything, still watching Damon and his hapless men prowl about through her binoculars. Chloe’s body is slowly but surely getting stiff from so long in one position, and her knees and thighs are growing wet from the mud squelching through the undergrowth beneath them. Probably, she will be sore from this and this alone. If she were back in her own body—

But she isn’t, she reminds herself for the hundredth time. They are still switched.

For now.

 

—

 

It’s three mind-numbing hours of screening through inane radio blather later before Chloe hears something worthwhile.

After an initial survey of the temple grounds and getting his operations situated, Damon has retreated back to Anuradhapura, preferring to wait in luxury at some fancy hotel or another while his men do the dirty work for him, delving into the temple’s mysteries. Figures. In his absence, the activity in the camp lulls, but never fully peters to a halt.

Around 6 PM, Chloe notices a group gathering, men strapping on bodycameras and flashlights and holstering pistols. Then the radio chatters to life. Chloe listens closely—it sounds like they’re sending in a survey team to inspect the temple. _Finally_.

She sits up, watches intently through the binoculars as the men finish readying themselves, then enter the temple’s gaping black chasm of an entrance, lowering themselves in with ropes and pulleys already in place, dangling from the trees above.

As soon as they disappear from sight, Chloe rises from where they’ve been lying on the ground—or, _she’s_ been lying, as Nadine headed off to do a patrolling circuit of their campsite ‘bout ten minutes ago, nervous about intruders—and heads to the jeep. She finds her bag—rather, the one Nadine’s packed for her in London—and returns to the ridge, sitting cross-legged on a flat bit of rock as she extracts her battered field laptop, pops it open, and connects by USB port the gadget Zip sent them by rushed airmail, because he’s a bloody saint and Chloe owes him big time for this.

A light on the little bugger turns green, which must mean it’s working. Good sign.

“Well?” says Nadine impatiently, appearing suddenly to crouch on her haunches next to Chloe.

“Just give it a minute,” Chloe scolds, a bit ruffled by her partner’s sudden appearance. Christ, there goes her stomach again, all a-twitter by her nearness. This would all be so much easier if she didn’t have to deal with such stupid— “It should—there!”

Just like that, the gadget starts working its magic. Zip had tried to explain how it worked, before, though Chloe’d only really started listening when Zip began to use buzz words like _ghosting_ and _untraceable_. Really, who doesn’t love a spot of espionage?

Basically, the device emits a signal that piggybacks off Damon’s own—along with any used by his men—and copies every bit of data exchanged before sending it right to Chloe to peruse at her leisure. Already, Chloe’s inbox is filling with messages and .jpegs of photos being taken within the temple at that very moment, sent from Damon’s just disappeared survey team to the man himself back in Anuradhapura.

Chloe grins, and begins to flick through the growing line of files. “Zip, you bloody _genius_.”

“Guess your friend pulled through,” Nadine grumbles, though she does sound vaguely impressed.

Together, they wait as the messages and photos continue to pour in, Chloe downloading them as soon as she’s able. When the traffic of files finally begins to slow—nearly an hour later—Chloe’s amassed quite a collection. She and Nadine begin the arduous task of parsing through it.

Initially, the photos are of the temple’s main entrance and first hallway. Chloe recognizes bits of broken rubble and a network of vines growing along the ceiling. The next surge of photos are of the temple’s first few chambers, which Chloe scrolls through without much attention. Been there, done that. She clicks faster. Seems the survey team is being especially thorough—more than; do they really need five photos of the same bloody thing? Talk about overkill.

Finally, she catches sight of a photo of the room she and Nadine remember all too well, and slows down.

“Here we go,” she says, clicking with care from one photo to the next. There are the murals of the Ramayana, decorating the octogonal walls of the chamber. There’s the divots in the stones of the jabbing spears, now hidden from sight. The circle on the floor has yet to make an appearance, and the altar is similarly nowhere to be found. The broken arrow—

“Shit,” she says, just as Nadine catches on as well. “The arrow.” Two weeks ago, they’d left the broken pieces of it in the chamber, too distraught with what’d happened to clean up after themselves. “They find one piece of that, they’ll know for sure we were in there.”

Nadine looks furious. If they’d hurried earlier today, they might’ve been able to utilize their headstart better—gotten inside the temple, been able to clean up the evidence before Damon and his men arrived. But no, they’d hadn’t the time for that. Plus, they’d agreed hiding in the temple was too dangerous.

“Shit,” she snarls, puts a hand on the gun at her belt. “Our cover’s about to be blown.”

Together, breaths held, they click through the next few photos, anticipating a chirp of the radio declaring “ _Ross and Frazer were here! Double the security!_ ” at any moment.

And yet, it doesn't come. The pictures of the octagonal-shaped room continue without a hitch. There are no photos of arrows, broken or otherwise. Chloe sees a picture of what she’s seventy-five percent sure is where at least one of the arrow pieces landed. The space is empty now. The arrow piece, it’s just… not there.

An eerie feeling creeps up Chloe’s spine, and she shivers. Where, exactly, have the pieces gone? Did someone take them? Or… Or did they just… disappear?

“Guess we’re just lucky,” she says at last, trying to ignore the prickling of her scalp at the idea.

“Suppose,” replies Nadine, looking a bit squicked out as well. The wariness in her expression grows.

Chloe swallows past a dry throat. She dislikes the idea of supernatural forces as much as the next fellow. Best not to think too much about it, then.

Valiantly, she continues to click through the photos—

“Wait,” Nadine says abruptly. “Why is the door open?”

“The door?” Chloe backs up to the previous photo. “That’s the one they walked in from, I think—”

“Not _that_ door,” says Nadine. “Look. The other door. The one we got stuck on. It’s open now.”

Chloe studies it for a moment, then realizes—shit—it _is_ the other door. What the hell?

“Why is it open?” Nadine repeats. “Did they do something? Go back.”

Chloe does, but there’s nothing in the photos to suggest the men found a hidden latch to open the door that halted Chloe and Nadine. “Looks like it was open when they got there?” she guesses. Jesus. They really should have just bloody gone inside!

It goes quiet. Chloe glances over. Nadine looks at though she’s trying not to explode. Luckily, she stands up and walks away before that actually happens. Chloe watches her stalk off. Clearly, Nadine's trying to tell herself not to get too angry about spilled milk and all that. Chloe chooses not to offer any advice, and after a bit, her partner calms down enough to rejoin her.

“Looks like they went inside,” she tells her as Nadine returns to a crouching position at her side. She clicks on the next photo with bated breath. It doesn’t disappoint.

Whoever Damon has working for him, Chloe would like to shake his hand, once this is all done with. The shot is pristine. From a dark hallway comes another chamber, bigger than any other they’ve seen so far in this temple. Damon’s men are fanned out, setting up lighting, wires for power, and waving flashlights back and forth. In the center of the room is what appears to be a large altar blocked off by massive stone slabs. On the slabs are more murals—only, these aren’t as specific as the ones from before. At least, Chloe doesn't think they're from the Ramayana, or from any other Hindu story she has knowledge of.

The next series of photos are close ups of each mural. There are four. The first is an arrow. The second, a circle. The third, two figures that appear vaguely human in shape, standing beside one another.

The fourth mural, unfortunately, is too degraded to decipher.

“That’s—” Chloe starts suddenly.

“Is that supposed to be—?” Nadine interrupts, and then they both go quiet, simultaneously speechless.

Chloe’s brain races. Are these murals representing what’s happened to them? And could it be showing them a way to fix it? But the fourth mural, it—

Nadine pokes a finger at the screen. “Can you read that?”

Chloe squints. On each of the murals is faded sanskrit lettering. Chloe zooms in, but that only makes the image grow blurry, since Zip’s gadgets are nifty but aren’t miracle-workers.

“Let’s see…” She returns to the arrow mural first, and begins to read haltingly. “Well, that says arrow, I think… And that’s the word for dead, or killed, I guess. And that says Maricha, there…” She mumbles a bit, then pieces it together. “ _The arrow that slew me... shall be your downfall._ ” A thrill goes down her back. It _is_ about their curse!

“Keep going,” Nadine urges, leaning closer, as if that will make it easier for Chloe to read such blurry sanskrit. The squeezing of her stomach triples in intensity at her nearness. Chloe does her best to ignore it, her voice going slightly breathy.

On the next photo, the circle, she reads, “ _So have you paid for your trespass… Two as two, but different…_ ”

“Shit,” says Nadine.

Now it’s the third mural, the two figures. Chloe strains to decipher the text correctly.

“ _You… you shall feel all of another, and wear their body as… as clothes._ _Their pain is your pain. Their pleasure, your pleasure._ ”

Nadine coughs abruptly at that in obvious disbelief, or maybe just outrage. Chloe rolls her eyes, clicks to the next image. The fourth mural, image wrecked by time. The sanskrit lettered is barely visible. Chloe almost puts her nose to her computer screen in her attempt to see it better.

“ _As… as you touch one, touch another. Wh—when two are… are as one, touch, and touch again._ ”

Finished, she sits up and lets out a deep breath, feeling at once accomplished and yet terribly confused.

Into the silence, Nadine grits, “What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?”

Chloe grimaces. “No idea, love. No bloody idea.”

 

—

 

More than two hours later, it’s pitch black out, the Sri Lankan jungle descending into an evening so thick and absolute Chloe couldn’t see her hand in front of her face if not for her mini battery-powered lantern or the glow of her laptop, still open on her lap. She’s combed through the entire bulk of the files from earlier for further clues and gotten nowhere. Messages flit in slowly now, Damon’s men corresponding with him and other workers, requesting translations of the sanskrit lettering and permission for further research, etcetera.

As far as they still may be from being fixed, Chloe’s done for the night. She can’t look at a screen any longer or her head will literally explode. She’s run the sanskrit lettering through a gamut of websites and research databanks, looking for alternate translations, deeper meanings, or hidden phrases, then sends them off to Zip, begging for a tightening up of graphics so she can read it better.

It’s frustrating and not a little depressing that she’s gotten nowhere in all these hours of just sitting here, but Chloe needs to get some bloody sleep, which will no doubt be interesting to attempt, wired and on-edge as Nadine’s body currently is. Still, she wants to try.

Nadine is already back in the driver’s seat of their canvas-roofed jeep, having just finished her tenth patrol circuit of their camp. Her palpable anxiety is bleeding into paranoia, resulting in a feverish need to concentrate on minute tasks—when Chloe reaches the jeep, laptop tucked against her hip, Nadine’s obsessively cleaning their guns for about the third time. As Chloe tosses her laptop back into her bag and then stretches out across the backseat with a groan, boots up, arms behind her head, Nadine finishes with her own pistol, and then moves on to Chloe’s much-less-used revolver. Chloe doesn’t comment, just props her head on the handle of the far door like a makeshift pillow and breathes in the smell of fresh jungle air seeping in from the open windows, the far-off chittering of monkeys and other four-legged or brightly-winged island inhabitants filling her ears.

“Well, I am officially out of ideas,” Chloe sighs, feeling somewhat defeated and annoyed at her own ineptitude. “We’ll have to wait and see if Zip can do anything for me with those images.” She pouts momentarily. She’d wanted to save the day, to triumphantly solve the mystery of their curse and bring it to her partner in their time of need. Instead, all she’s got is the start of a migraine and a lingering stomach ache from her partner’s proximity, which is, you know… _Fun_.

In answer, Nadine simply grunts. She doesn’t appear surprised, which makes Chloe glower. Nadine could’ve at least made it _seem_ like she believed Chloe would get them out of this one. Her clear lack of faith is practically insulting.

“What do _you_ think it means, then?” Chloe asks, trying to play on her phone for only a few seconds before discarding it into the seat pocket beside her. Her heart isn’t in it. She covers her eyes with a hand and recites in an uppity tone, “ _Two are as one_ , and all that?”

“Hell if I know,” Nadine says bluntly. She finishes Chloe’s pistol and then tucks both guns away under the passenger seat, within easy reach. Without something to keep her hands occupied, however, she appears lost for purpose. Her right leg starts to bounce. Her hand grips the steering wheel and begins a quick tapping of short-nailed fingers. Chloe watches with chagrined amusement. She can tell the usual buzzing restlessness of her body is hitting Nadine harder than ever. Only there’s no satin pillowcases for them out here in the jungle.

Shame.

She keeps talking, if only to serve as a distraction for her partner. “Old riddle kept popping up while I was trying to research the sanskrit. _Two bodies have I, though both joined in one. The more still I stand, the quicker I run. What am I?_ ”

Nadine makes a grouchy sound. “You know how I love riddles,” she says, words dripping with sarcasm.

Chloe allows herself a small chuckle. “It’s an hourglass.”

“Hmm.”

“Not sure what ours could be, though.” Chloe thinks about it some more, even though her entire head is throbbing with fatigue. An idea strikes. “Unless… _Two are as one…_ Think it’s got something to do with, like, marriage, maybe? I guess that kind of works.”

“...Maybe,” says Nadine, sounding doubtful. She turns her face away, peering out the window into the darkness beyond. “I’m not marrying you, Frazer.”

Chloe laughs at that. “Not without a ring, you’re not. First thing on my to-do list, once we get back.”

To that, Nadine has no reply other than to drum at the steering wheel even harder. Shit. Chloe’d been trying to dispel the tension trapped here in the jeep with them—'course, now it’s just ratcheted up even further, because now she’s sure the both of them are imagining the same thing; being married to each other. Her stomach flips and rolls. She clenches her teeth against the feeling. Damn this body. Damn Ross and her nerves. If she has a—a what? A goddamn _crush_ or whatever on Chloe, she should just bloody _admit it already—_

“ _As you touch one, touch another,_ ” Chloe recites quietly, in a desperate need to distract herself now. “ _Touch, and touch again._ ” She mulls it over for a bit, then sits ups. “Here, let me try something for a minute.” She reaches out between the front seats and lays her hand on her partner’s clothed shoulder. The material of the red shirt Nadine is wearing is soft under her fingertips, the flesh beneath warm and giving. A faint hum of static electricity threatens.

Nadine turns her head to watch her, a guarded look on her face. The only light in the jeep is from Chloe’s little lantern, hanging overhead, and there is something in Nadine’s eyes Chloe can’t quite place. The aching feeling in her stomach grows worse, until she’s sweating with it as they wait.

Nothing happens.

Which, _of course_ nothing happens.

This is stupid, she realizes. They touched, before. After switching, then when they hugged goodbye at the airport. When they hugged hello, earlier that day. But maybe…

“Maybe—” She slides her hand downwards, so they are touching skin to skin, her palm to Nadine’s bicep.

The stray static charge abruptly snaps—it’s a small one, like the tiny jolt of a piece of fabric pulled fresh from the dryer and buzzing with ions. Chloe jerks her hand away in surprise and Nadine jumps, startled.

“Sorry,” Chloe says automatically, then hesitates. No, it couldn’t possibly… Nadine appears to be thinking along the same lines, her neck and chest darkening, flushing a deep red. Chloe has literally never seen herself blush. It’s unnerving, to say the least.

_When two are as one…_

“You don’t think…?” Chloe starts, unsure.

“No,” Nadine cuts her off gruffly.

“Right.” Chloe quickly lays back down, stares up at the jeep’s canvas roof. Listens to the sound of the monkeys chittering in the night. The subtle drone of the radio on the passenger seat, tuned into the frequency of Damon’s men, who’ve similarly gone to sleep. “Of course.”

It’s quiet, then. Painfully so.

But now Chloe can’t stop thinking about it.

_Two as one…_

It can’t be.

_Their pain is your pain. Their pleasure, your pleasure._

Sex? _Really?_ There’s—there’s no way. Absolutely _no way_ that’s the answer.

Even if it is, though— _Christ_ , if it is—Chloe sure as hell won’t be the one suggesting it.

“Try it again,” says Nadine, her tone soft, subdued. Chloe lifts her head from the door handle, props an elbow beneath her. With care, she reaches between the seats again and touches Nadine’s arm.

There’s no static electricity this time, just the warmth of another body beneath her hand, of a light, relatively innocent skin on skin contact. She’s touching her own body, touching _herself_ , Chloe realizes, but refrains from making a dirty joke about it. Now is really not the time, not with Nadine looking as vulnerable as she does at that moment.

“Feel anything?” Chloe asks, unsure.

Nadine closes her eyes briefly, like she’s concentrating. Then she frowns, shakes her head. “No. You?”

Chloe swallows. It’s getting harder and harder to ignore the push and pull of this body she’s barely in control of right now, the way it throbs at the nearness of her partner. Of herself. She could easily say, _No, nothing_ , and they could go back to their awkward silence for the rest of the night, and then face Damon tomorrow and maybe get fixed or maybe just get shot. Who knows.

Instead, she chooses honesty. “I—I mean, I feel something, but I don’t think it’s _that._ ”

There is a sharp intake of breath. Nadine pulls away. Chloe’s hand drops from her arm. Refusing to snatch it back like she’s done something wrong, or like she feels guilty for doing it—she doesn’t—Chloe merely pulls her arm calmly into her lap and lays down once again. She knows when she’s gone too far, too hard. Now might be a bad time, but when else are they going to talk about it?

Leaves rustle. Monkeys chitter. The radio is quiet.

Chloe swallows.

“Why do I make you nervous, Nadine?” she asks.

Nadine, naturally, doesn’t answer. When she does open her mouth, a good fifteen seconds later, what comes out is, “Why did you cry about me to _Sam Drake_?” Her voice is low but scornful, just barely rising over the hum of the jungle crowded around them. Her face is turned away again.

Chloe takes a sharp breath of her own. Is that how they’re going to play this? You show me yours, I show you mine? Probably, Nadine thinks this’ll get her to shut up. To back off. Well _fuck_ that.

“Alright, first off, I was drunk. When I’m drunk, I get emotional.” Nadine whips around, staring at her with wide eyes, as if she can’t believe Chloe’s actually giving her a solid answer, but Chloe’s on a roll now, and nothing, not even the risk of some self-deprecation, can make her stop now. “Second, Sam had just tried something with me, which would reduce any sane woman to tears. Third, I hadn’t gotten laid since… Since before India, probably. Bit of a dry spell, back then.” She grimaces. Admits under her breath, “Currently, too. But that’s a story for another time.” Nadine hasn’t said anything yet, or told her to stop talking, so Chloe gathers up all the courage she has for leaping from cliffs and getting into gunfights and jumping on runaway trains and barrels blindly onward.  

“Now, I’m not the best person in the world. I’ve got my faults, sure. But I try to be kind most of the time, yeah? I try to do the right thing, in my work and with my friends. But still, sometimes it seems like the people in my life who matter to me… They have a nasty habit of just… leaving me behind.” Her voice wobbles at the last word. She bites her lip. “Nate? He took off. Thought maybe he was the one for me, way back when, but no. He left me for Elena, and bless him for it, because have you seen those two together? God. And Cassie. Don’t get me started on her, I love to her bits.” She clears her throat, tries to get back on track. “My dad, he left when I was little. Told you about that already. My mum, she doesn’t call me much. She’s got nothing on your mum, let me tell you. My fault, partly. I should be reaching out, too. Anyways. Friends? I have lots of friends. Loads. And I was close with some of them, for the obvious reasons. Charlie and Flynn and some others. And where are they all now, these friends?" She shrugs, tries to play it off like it something that doesn't matter, doesn't bother her. "But you? You’re here, with me.”

She thinks of that night in the bar, sobbing into her drink while Sam sat uncomfortably beside her, blubbering on and on about her partner and her life in general. She’d sworn him to secrecy, afterwards, ashamed of herself for that moment of weakness. Just thinking about it makes her want to cringe.

“I cried about you to Sam because you and I have been partners for ten months,” she says slowly. “My previous longest partnership, professionally, wasn’t even half that.” She smiles to herself bitterly. “Suppose I’m just waiting for the other boot to drop, I guess.”

Nadine's mouth is thin with anger. “Do you really think that? That’d I just—just leave you like that? Like they did? After everything?”

Chloe looks away. She doesn’t think that, not at all, but it’d be foolish to go on believing it would never happen. She’s Chloe Frazer, after all. That’s just how things go with her. “No. Not really. But I—I don’t want to hope, you know? Because one day you might. You can’t promise you won’t.” She swallows again. “Just, listen. If you ever do… tell me first, alright?”

“Be quiet,” snaps Nadine with authority.

Chloe obeys, despite herself, and for a long while, they just sit there, without speaking. Chloe waits for Nadine to storm from the jeep and go on another circuit of their campsite, for ‘security’ or some other half-baked excuse, for her to—

“You know why you make me nervous.”

Chloe jumps, startled. “Huh?”

Nadine repeats in a tone that is both emotional and yet cool, “I said, you know why you make me nervous.”

“...I do?” Chloe sits up slightly, blurts, “I mean, I figured you had a crush on me or something—”

“Or something, Frazer,” Nadine confirms, eyes averted.

Chloe’s stunned into silence. _Or something?_ What bloody else is there, other than a crush?

Unless it’s more than that. Unless it’s—

“Not like it matters, anyways, if we don’t get fixed,” Nadine says, with a nonchalance so fake Chloe can see the cracks running all throughout.

The knotted feeling in Chloe’s stomach triples. Christ. Does this mean Nadine has feelings for her? And did Chloe just basically force her to admit them?

 _God_ she’s horrible at this.

Chloe slumps, knocks the back of her head on the door handle. Covers her face with a hand, and says, muffled behind her palm, “Shit.”

Nadine doesn’t reply. Chloe is compelled to continue, because she’s a bloody idiot.

“Look, I know you’re mad, but—”

“Mad?” Nadine snaps. “Of course I’m mad. I don’t want to be here, dealing with this. I want my goddamned body back.”

“Hey, I want mine back, too,” Chloe protests. Nadine may be having a hard time right now, but she’s certainly not the only one. “I mean, I like this new one and all, but the old girl, she was nice too.” She smiles, hoping for a laugh or even an eye-roll or a sigh from her partner. Anything to show her she hasn’t ruined everything, just like she feared she might, that night at the bar with Sam.

Suddenly, Nadine gets out of the jeep. Chloe, who’s been expecting this for a while now, is still surprised by the action. Then, she relaxes slightly, anticipating a few precious moments alone to gather herself before round two—

—but Nadine doesn’t go stalking off into the dark. She stalks, instead, to the door by Chloe’s booted feet, opens it, and hauls herself into the back seat with her.

Chloe jerks upright. Tries to move, to make room. Reaches for the door handle above her head, wondering if maybe she should make a run for it because Nadine's sudden nearness is wreaking havoc on this body, her heart slamming near out of her chest—

“What are you doing?” she asks in a tone much calmer than the one in her head, which is currently shrieking _it’s happening it’s happening it’s HAPPENING—_

Nadine stretches herself out across the seats with Chloe, forcing her to resume her earlier position or else she’ll knock her partner off the already way-too-small backseat and onto the jeep floor. Quite suddenly, they are facing each other, noses inches apart, breathing each other’s warm air, torsos pressed together. Chloe can feel the shape of her own breasts pushing into her chest, and her heart spasms.

“Nadine—”

“Will having sex fix us?” Nadine asks bluntly.

Chloe feels like she’s been clubbed. “... _What?_ ”

“If we have sex, will we switch back?”

“How the bloody hell am I supposed to know—”

“You _fokken_ well read it, didn’t you?” Nadine gestures at the air with the hand that is not currently squeezed under Chloe’s side to keep herself from slipping off the seat. “ _Their pain, your pain, their pleasure, your pleasure. Touch and touch again_. What else could it mean?”

Lots of things, Chloe thinks, _this_ being perhaps their last option. But that doesn’t mean it’ll _work_. In fact, in Chloe’s experience, first guesses are usually the wrong ones.

“Nadine, listen, we don’t—”

“It’s fine, Chloe—”

“No, it isn’t!” Suddenly, she’s angry. “Are you that desperate to fix us that you’d _make yourself—_ ”

“I’m not _making_ myself do anything,” Nadine says over her. “I _want_ to try. Do you?”

And, Christ, does she ever. But no, she can’t do this. Nadine clearly doesn’t want it. She looks miserable. Stressed. Not possibly in her right mind. “Nadine, it’s not that simple—”

“I'm nervous around you because I’ve been in love with you for months.”

Pure shock drops Chloe’s jaw. An eruption of warmth rockets to her head and builds there, like her skull is about to explode. She puts her hands on Nadine’s chest and _shoves_. Nadine yelps and barely catches herself from falling off the seat.

“ _Hey!_ ”

“Nadine Ross,” Chloe snarls, teeth bared. “You are _not_ going to _trick me_ into sleeping with you—”

“Goddamn it, Chloe, I’m not—”

"—think I’ll just roll over soon as you _smmfff—_ ”

Nadine kisses her. Chloe fights it at first— _barely—_ and lasts about two seconds before she’s grabbing Nadine’s slender little shoulders and hanging on for dear life. Her partner’s lips are soft and warm and sweet, and where usually Chloe’d be adding a bit of tongue to spice things up Nadine is far more reserved, stroking their mouths together once, twice, and then a third time with such focused intent and purpose it turns Chloe’s spine to water. The taste and feel of her is foreign—and utterly not Nadine, she realizes a moment later, because it’s kind of, well, _herself_ she’s kissing, her own body and her own lips and mouth, but it’s still them, somehow, her and Nadine and they’ve just been switched around, that’s all, and y’know what, does it really matter who’s who anymore?

They part, and she slumps back against the seats, boneless, and dazedly opens her eyes. It’s odd, looking up at her own face so very close like this, tracing her own swollen mouth and red-flushed cheeks, gazing deep into familiar greyish eyes but knowing it’s someone else in there.

“Holy shit, that was _so_ fucking weird,” says Chloe.

After a beat, they both burst into helpless, stifled laughter. Nadine collapses against her, and Chloe turns a bit so she can cradle Nadine’s head in the curve of her neck. The arm that’s wormed its way under her side tightens around her back, and they hold one another close as the last of their hitching laughter fades away, leaving just them and their rapid breathing and prickling skin and the growing heat building around them.

Chloe huffs against Nadine’s cheek, her soft black hair, unruly flyaway tendrils already escaping from her braid. “You okay down there, Ross?”

“Not really,” says Nadine, voice muffled against Chloe’s neck.

“Not really?”

“Just… Didn’t want it to be like this, ja?”

“Like what?”

Nadine sighs. “Take your pick. In a jeep. Out in the jungle in the middle of nowhere. Not even in my own body.” She pauses. “Only doing it because we have to.”

“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, love. See, there’s only about a one percent chance this’ll work, and switch us back. And to be honest, it’s probably less than that, I’m just being generous, here. The other ninety-nine percent? That’s all us.” Nadine lifts her head, looking somewhat reassured though still doubtful, and Chloe grins wickedly at her. “But you _have_ thought about it, then? Having sex with me?”

Caught, Nadine goes stiff and silent, her lips clamped into a hard line. If she goes stomping out of the jeep now, Chloe’s going to pull her back in by her hair. “I—”

“‘Cause, I mean, I sure have,” Chloe admits readily, as a sort of peace offering. “As in, multiple times a day for the past… er, how long ago did we meet again?”

Nadine rolls her eyes. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Right?” Chloe laughs. “I mean, hello. Look at you. Look at me. How could I _not_ imagine it?”

“Keep talking,” says Nadine. “You’re definitely putting me in the mood.”

Chloe laughs again, suggests, “Maybe I should go first, then.” She has no problem with a little—or a lot of—selfishness. Especially right now. “Just saying,” she adds. “Willing test subject, right here.”

Nadine’s brows lower. “In _my_ body,” she reminds.

“Oh.” Chloe blinks. Shit. She’s forgotten in all the commotion. “Well… I suppose I could do _you_ , instead—or would that still count as _me_ going first, technically—?”

“ _Eish_ , stop talking.” Nadine sighs again, then seems to bolster herself. To assume control. She puts her free hand on Chloe’s clothed hip. The weight of it, the promise of more, sends a flash of heat through Chloe’s borrowed body, and she shudders. She'd pegged Nadine as a complete bottom. It's nice to be wrong, sometimes.

“It’ll be easy,” Chloe says, trying to keep her tone light and playful when really she’s the one who’s starting to panic a bit inside. “Just pretend you’re masturbating. You do know what _that_ is, right?”

Nadine, at least, doesn’t smack her for that one, just makes an annoyed sound. “I’m not a robot.”

“So, that a yes, then?” She grins wolfishly, and doesn’t even try to hide it. “Felt like a yes.”

“Keep it in your pants, Frazer.”

“How ‘bout _you_ keep it in my pants?”

“I’ll get out of this jeep,” Nadine warns, and Chloe immediately sobers.

“Sorry! Sorry! I’ll be quiet.” Naturally, three seconds later, she’s blabbering out, “Just so you know, if you don’t want this to, you know, mean anything, or whatever—if you want to forget about this afterwards, because it’s so weird—I can do that, too.”

Nadine scoffs. “Right.”

“No, really! I can be impartial if I have to be. I’ve had my fair share of one night stands.”

It’s a blatant lie, clearly—not the one night stand part, she’s had plenty of those—but that Chloe could pretend this would be anything like them. In the past, she hadn’t cared about things like names or faces, who she liked more, blokes or birds, if she would ever see any of these people again once the night was through, or—god forbid—if there were anything like _feelings_ involved. Being young was fun and wild, and she had a great time. Now, however, here in this jeep, it’s just her and Nadine Ross, her business partner of the past ten months and still going strong—unless this wrecks it.

Still, doesn’t hurt to try, does it? Going out with a bang, that’s how Chloe likes it.

Nadine seems to come to the same decision, and shuffles a tiny bit closer, so their bodies are pressed together again, the entire length of them, lying on their sides with knees crooked and threaded between each other’s so they’ll fit together on the seat, boots knocking, chests brushing, the tips of their noses bumping once or twice.

“Don’t kiss me ‘til I tell you,” says Nadine in a rough whisper. Chloe’s disappointed, sure, but understands the sentiment—it _is_ pretty weird, just the idea of kissing yourself, let alone actually doing it. Maybe once was enough for Nadine. That’s fine, though. Chloe likes kissing, likes it alot, but hopefully it won’t matter much in the end—

Goosebumps prickle the moment she feels fingers plucking at her belt, threading the thick leather out of the buckle and undoing the front button of her cargo pants. Her nipples are instantly hard, chafing against the material of her constricting sports bra. There is warm breath on her ear and lips on the side of her jaw—Nadine’s buried her face into Chloe’s temple, probably in an attempt to avoid looking directly at her, which is just fine, too—making her eyelids flutter, and in her nose is the familiar arousing spice of her own body, pressed tortuously close, warming up for a good time.

Yeah, the whole no-kissing thing isn’t going to matter at all, with how this is going.

Now, usually, if Chloe Frazer is having sex, she takes a bit to really get herself along. It’s how she prefers it. Some working up before takeoff, you know? That’s not strange for someone her age and level of experience—the best engines need some revving before they’re purring, never mind a good roar or two. And, when she _is_ ready to take off, she’ll last and last, sometimes all night.  

And that’s how it would be, if Chloe were still in her own body. She most certainly _isn’t_ , a fact of which she’s reminded only a few moments later.

One second, as Nadine works the flat of her hand past her drawn-open fly to press against the front of her boring pair of plain white briefs, Chloe’s doing a steady, puttering 20 kph. In the next second, when Nadine uses a finger to draw those same briefs down over the jutting points of her hipbones—pausing to work Chloe’s trousers from side to side to give herself more room to work—Chloe’s doing a breakneck 200 kph. Her heart is hammering, sweat gathering at the small of her back and in the hollow of her neck. The jeep feels abruptly stifling. There is a new scent filling the stuffy air, and she realizes with some faintness that it’s the smell of Nadine’s body, its heady arousal, a musky wetness growing between her legs that very moment.

Nadine kisses her neck. Chloe nearly yelps, and forces herself still. Strong as her body is right now, she desperately doesn’t want to accidently jerk and hurt her partner. Christ, that’d be mortifying. Doesn’t help, though, that Nadine’s body is so ferociously sensitive, more so than Chloe’s used to. The breath against her nape—coming quicker now, hotter—sends shudders down her back, and the hand resting momentarily back on her hip—her _bare_ hip, she thinks, and feels her heart stagger—slides across the flat of her muscular stomach and comes to rest between her legs.

And— _Jesus_ , okay—it seems like a bit of foreplay is going to be _absolutely_ unnecessary. Chloe risks a single glance down, sees a dusky brown hand sliding between her muscled thighs and almost comes on the spot, without even being touched, really. It’s like whiplash, struggling away from it. Or limping, more like.

Then Nadine actually does touch her, and Chloe tries with everything she can not to move and _still_ comes halfway off the seats with a spasm of pleasure, gasping sharply. Nadine, thankfully, doesn’t comment, just takes Chloe by the hip again and holds her down for a moment with an air of domination, as if to correct her for being disobedient—which really, really, _really_ doesn’t help Chloe, who’s literally seconds from coming her brains out about thirty whole seconds into this encounter, because _that’s_ not embarrassing.

“ _Shit_ ,” she whispers, when Nadine makes no effort to ease Chloe into this, just returns her hand to the pooling heat between Chloe's legs, swipes the delicate skin on her inner thigh to gather some dripping wetness, and then simply begins a slow, circular rubbing of her clit with the tips of two fingers. Chloe can’t help but wonder if this is how Nadine likes it, if this is how she masturbates, and strains against a fresh wave of arousal at the idea.

Her brain shuts down after that, thankfully, and it’s all she can do to bite her lips and hide her face in Nadine’s hair, trying not to let every whimper and gasp and moan escape from her treacherous mouth, for fear of embarrassing her partner too badly. Chloe has no shame when it comes to sex, but Nadine probably doesn’t like the idea of having to listen to herself get fucked.

Then Nadine starts going quicker, and Chloe starts hyperventilating. Her hips jolt hard enough to throw Nadine back a couple inches. Jesus, the sensitivity of this body is out of control. Her toes are already curling. Nadine hasn’t even put a finger in, just rubs faster and faster at the hard, swollen bead of her clit with the rough pads of her fingers, the circles tighter now. Harder. Everything between Chloe’s legs is sopping wet and throbbing.

Yeah, this jeep is _definitely_ hers now.

“Breathe, Frazer,” says a somewhat amused voice in her ear, so low it’s just a husky sort of rumble.

“ _Guh_ ,” Chloe replies, wheezing out her held breath, and then bites her lip so hard she flinches in pain, embarrassed with her newfound inability to speak. Ridiculous and ego-destroying as it may be, she’s not going to last much longer, which will stretch the length of this encounter to _maybe_ two and a half minutes, if that—

She threads her arms under Nadine’s and clings to her slender back for support, feels everything in her building and building, sees flashes behind her squeezed-shut eyes, feels herself beginning to twitch more and more, and then her hips are shuddering and Nadine isn’t doing circles anymore, just a quick back and forth rub so fast her hand’s a blur and—

Her orgasm, quick as it comes, is so powerful it feels like she’s being snapped in half. Chloe is used to a warm and dreamy climax; a slow, cresting rise into boneless relaxation. This—this is like a bludgeon to the head. Or, groin, as it were. It leaves her breathless and shaky, face mashed against Nadine’s shoulder, clutching at her sweaty red shirt with the weakness of an invalid.

“ _Jesus_ ,” she whimpers out, after a bit of gulping for air. Three minutes into this, and Chloe feels like she’s been bowled over by a rockslide, then run a marathon afterwards. “Is it always like that, for you?”

Nadine shrugs, looks away, like she’s too shy to look at her own pleasure-lined face after orgasm. Not that Chloe blames her or anything—probably, after all that, her expression is a bit on the goofy side, anyways.

Then Nadine angles her face slightly towards her, lids partly lowered, and says softly, “You can kiss me now, if you like.”

Chloe doesn’t have to hear that twice. She grabs Nadine by the ears and lays one on her. With tongue, thank you very much.

When they pull apart, Chloe’s lips buzzing, mouth filled with the taste of her own lips and tongue, Nadine is gasping almost as hard as she is.

“Well,” says Chloe, trying for confident and commanding and sounding exactly like she feels—fucked six ways from Sunday. She’s only just now remembered they were doing this for a reason, though it feels more like an excuse than ever before. “Clearly, that didn’t work. I’m still you.”

“You didn’t feel anything at all?” Chloe grins wickedly at that, and Nadine adds hastily, “Other than the obvious, Frazer.”

Chloe tries to think about it. She felt alot of things—stupidly happy, incredibly turned on, capped off with a massive, brain-destroying headrush—but not anything… otherwordly. It’s only vaguely disappointing at this point.

“Maybe I should do you,” Chloe suggests without any innocence at all to cover her ploy. “You know. Just in case.”

Honestly, she doesn’t think Nadine will agree, now that they know this method is a bust. She’s also prepared for this to be her one and only masturbatory fodder for the next ten years or so, if worst comes to worst and they never get fixed and Nadine leaves her in an outrage.

Nadine looks a bit nervous, then says, “I guess.”

Chloe doesn’t goggle, even though she wants to. This is a dream come true. Nadine seems agreeable, yet less than enthused, so Chloe makes it her mission to change that opinion at once, and lays an open palm in a firm caress over Nadine’s chest.

Nadine makes a strangled sound and jumps, like she wasn’t at all prepared for the sudden contact. Probably, her breasts aren’t as sensitive as Chloe’s, or she just doesn’t touch them often enough when she’s doing all that masturbating they talked about before. But Chloe, she knows herself, her own body, and she _loves_ having her breasts played with. She locates a nipple through the fabric of the wonderfully-red shirt her partner’s wearing just for her and gives it a good pinch and twist, just the way she likes. The breath stutters in Nadine’s throat and her eyes clamp shut.

“Christ,” she hisses. "This _is_ weird."

“Do me a favor, love,” Chloe breathes into her ear. “Take your shirt off, will you?”

As though rendered speechless, Nadine obediently props herself up on an elbow and practically tears it over her head, mussing her braided hair and leaving herself in a plain white bra, the likes of which Chloe is sure she would never own, or else kept stuffed far in the far, far back of her bureau. That Nadine chose to wear that instead of all the lacy alternatives is cute.

She catches the front of the bra between two fingers and draws it up and over Nadine’s breasts, baring light brown skin and hard pink nipples. She runs the dull edge of her thumbnail over one and watches as it hardens, as Nadine’s flat belly heaves with a loud moan, goosebumps prickling all across her bare chest.

Chloe _grins._ This is going to be _spectacular_. Who better to fuck herself than, well, herself? Nadine coming along for the ride—no pun intended but not exactly discouraged—well, that’s just a bonus. A very big one.

Cross _this_ off her bucket list.

 

—

 

Nadine is used to being reserved during sex. Relatively unemotional. Not rigid or cold, just… restrained. She doesn’t have sex very often, either—unlike Chloe, her libido’s always been a bit on the lower side—and when she does have it, it isn’t some long, drawn out thing. It most certainly isn't for _fun,_ either. She’s learned to be quick about it. Perfunctory, almost. She hasn’t had a steady girlfriend in years, not since she took over Shoreline from her father—just random women here or there who’ve been interested in a night with her and are as averse to relationships as herself. Having a significant other got in the way of work, of responsibilities.

Nadine's fine with it. She gets lonely from time to time, but who doesn't? It's normal for her, now, the self-inflicted chastity. She's learned to adapt, to do without.

Needless to say, this is the exact opposite of doing without.

This kind of sex, Nadine is a stranger to. She doesn't recognize it, not one bit—to the noises crawling out of her mouth, gasps and moans and fluttery little girlish sighs; to her hips, jerking and jumping completely out of her control, as if orchestrated by an unknown and unseen conductor; to the messy slick between her legs, everything below her waist gone hot and wet and throbbing with need, thighs slippery with it.

This, Nadine realizes dully, is what sex is supposed to be like. This kind of passion is foreign to her. This abandon, unfamiliar. It frightens her, almost. There is a distinct lack of control here, but it's not something she can wrest back, or fight against. It's not an enemy. It's _Chloe_. 

Chloe isn't like Nadine—she's not shy about this. Not at all. Where Nadine had to hide her face before fucking Chloe—fucking _herself_ , in a way—to a quick, relatively painless (on her part) orgasm, Chloe pushes Nadine down with visible relish and hovers over her with a smug little grin on her face, wasting no time at all and sliding two fingers inside her so deep—wait, when did she undo her pants?—that the rest of her knuckles dig hard against the curve of her arse. Nadine gasps, feels herself squeeze down at them into a tight clench and begins to quiver. She's never been much of a fan of penetration—a take-it-or-leave-it attitude for it, personally—but this isn't her, technically, because she's in Chloe's body at the moment, and this, as she can clearly tell now, is something her partner very much enjoys.

" _Fuck_ ," she whimpers out, and then, of course, not to be outdone, Chloe dips her head down, soft, bouncy curls tickling across Nadine's chest, and catches a bare nipple in her wicked mouth, sucking harshly. As Nadine's back bows, bringing her up off the seats, Chloe _bites_ her. Sparks ignite all across her torso. Nadine doesn't scream, exactly, though it's a close thing. She writhes on the seats while Chloe plays with her, switching from breast to breast as all the while those two fingers sit motionless inside of her, a reminder of what is to come.

Several minutes later, Chloe kisses and licks her way from Nadine's sore nipples to her throat, and then ducks in for a kiss on the mouth, at the last moment seeming to remember Nadine's earlier request to ask permission first. “Can I kiss you?”

Nadine can't help but recoil slightly. Somehow, even with Chloe already fingering her, kissing seems like too much. An over-abundance of intimacy. “Sorry." Seeing her own face, hovering there, is so strange already. Nadine's not sure how much more she can take.

“Can't you just... close your eyes?” says Chloe, in a whiny sort of way.

Nadine turns her head, buries a gasp as those wonderfully callused fingers— _her_ wonderfully callused fingers—twist and catch on a sensitive spot deep inside her. Jesus.

"Fine," Chloe pouts, and begins to thrust her hand in earnest. She noses back down to Nadine's sensitive chest, focusing on a single breast with her hot mouth and pinching the other with her free hand. It feels like she's everywhere, touching everything. Nadine has to tell herself to breathe, everytime Chloe's fingers bottom out inside of her. Chloe's thumb slips unerringly through the slippery mess of her, finds the hard little knot of her clit, and presses there, firmly. Her fingers slide in and out with sloppy wet sounds, faster and faster, until Nadine can barely think.

Nadine, who's become very accustomed to short yet intense rounds of sex, of quick, snapping orgasms, is screaming by the time she comes, what feels like a tortuous hour later—at the most, she will acknowledge in the near future, it was probably only around fifteen minutes or so.

Higher and higher, it brings her. Nadine keeps expecting an end, a crash, a finish. When she does actually climax, she shakes so hard she can feel the jeep shudder. Her mouth falls open. Her hands clench into fists. Again, she waits for the resultant crash, the end to such pleasurable suffering.

Only it's not there. She feels herself tensing again, and then— _Jesus_ , is that two orgasms or just one long one? It doesn't stop there, either. Just when she thinks it's over, another wave of white fire rolls over her, gentle spasms wracking her body. _How_ is she still coming?

She's grateful when things go blurry after that. She comes to less than a minute later, feeling slightly groggy but, for the first time in two weeks, completely _relaxed_.

Chloe is kissing her stomach, murmuring to her soothingly, her fingers still inside her, shifting minutely now and then. Nadine feels hot and swollen, but not to the point of pain. Usually, she is too sensitive after an orgasm to immediately strive for another. Chloe's body, on the other hands, seems hungry for more.

The kisses are going lower and lower, Nadine realizes dimly, and jerks back to full awareness. She grabs Chloe by the shoulder, holds her still.

“You are _not_ going down on me—on _you_ , I mean—in _my_ body. That’s just _too_ weird.”

"So close your eyes!” Chloe repeats, again in that whiny tone. Nadine hates that she finds it adorable. As if in reproach, the fingers inside her begin to stir again, and Nadine quivers, but valiantly resolves not to give in.

Another orgasm later, her pants are down around her knees and Chloe is face-first between her legs. Nadine can’t exactly find it in herself to complain. The discovery that Chloe's body is more sensitive on one side of her clit than the other seems a marvelous fact to learn, all of a sudden.

Chloe has absolutely no shame. She licks at Nadine as though she's starving, as though there's nothing else in the world that would please her more. For the first few minutes, Nadine can't get over the fact that Chloe is licking _herself_ , while in _Nadine's body_ , but then that rising wave of white fire is growing again, and everything else seems to matter much, much less.

This time, when she rouses from her pleasure-addled stupor, everything is tingling and her entire body feels like it’s about to float off into space. Her head feels light and full of stars. It takes a while to find her breath. Orgasms in her old body powerful, yes, but easily reached and then pushed aside. Chloe's body seems to take each one and grow more eager, hotter and wetter.

Chloe's up beside her now, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand, looking terribly pleased with herself. “Well, _that_ didn’t work,” she says, with a sulky, put-upon tone that Nadine immediately pegs as fake. They’ve both enjoyed themselves plenty.

“Uh huh,” Nadine pants. Had they been doing this for an actual reason? She can't really remember. Everything’s sort of a jumble right now.

“Think maybe we have to… finish at the same time?” Chloe asks.

“Sure,” Nadine babbles, still riding the last pulsing wave of her orgasm and already aching for another. She’s ready for anything. Anything.

So, yes, they try that, too.

 

—

 

Nadine rouses to an irritated shout of “Oh, you’ve got to be bloody _kidding_ me!”

Immediately, she’s awake.

Or, her mind is, at least. Her body— _Chloe’s_ body, still—not so much. As it is, she sits, bolt upright, and almost knocks her head on a bar of the jeep’s roll cage because her eyes are refusing to open and her limbs feel like they weigh two hundred kilograms apiece.

Christ, when she gets back into her own body, she’s going to… to… _dance_ , maybe.

With effort, she blinks against a beam of sunlight shining through the window beside her. It’s early morning, the jungle around them lush with sound and movement—toque macaques and purple-faced langurs bounding from branch to branch, bright green parakeets calling to one another, dew dripping off leaves, pattering like rain. Her shirt is still on the floor of the jeep, bra tangled around her lean, bare torso, jeans unbuttoned and pushed under the curve of her arse. A thin blanket has been draped over her, unneeded now in the rising jungle heat.

It all comes back then, last night. A searing embarrassment sweeps through her, freezing her in place. Christ, had that really happened? The memory of kissing Chloe, the struggle of seeing her own body, laying there, gasping in pleasure, then the feel of her own fingers between her legs, coaxing four orgasms out of her—four! From Nadine, who years ago had learned to be content with _one!—_ wringing every drop of pleasure out of her and leaving her hungry for more.

Then she remembers Chloe’s brazenness, how she’d licked at Nadine, sucked at her, at _herself—_

Feeling suddenly dizzy, she forces herself to stop. Slowly, but with intent, she decides to start with the easiest task she thinks she can manage, and gets herself in order; she fixes her tangled bra, hiding those beautiful breasts beneath plain white cloth, then fishes her shirt off the floor, drawing it on over her head before hiking her pants back up and untying her hair, mess that it’s become overnight, and drags her fingers through it a few times to comb out the knots—her fingers, which just last night had been inside her partner (inside herself, if you wanted to be literal about it), the same partner who she’d also admitted being love with, oh _Christ—_

She practically leaps from the jeep, slamming the door behind her and jumping at the sound of it, echoing into the jungle canopy above, louder than she’d anticipated. She glances around. Chloe’s sitting on the hood of the jeep, peering at her laptop with apparent disgust.

Struggling against her own trepidation and the lingering sluggishness of her body and mustering all of the nerve of a fully-trained former-PMC headwoman, Nadine half-marches, half-stumbles over to her, hanging on to the driver’s side mirror for balance.

“What? What is it?” A horrid thought occurs, sending a cold flush through her. “Has Damon already gone inside the temple and taken everything?”

Chloe’s head jerks up. She’s in the cargo pants and belt from the day before, but has swapped her black shirt for a white tank top already gone dark around the neck from sweat, the muscles in her arms gleaming lightly from the morning’s humidity.

“Huh?” she says. Then, “No, no.” She turns the laptop so Nadine can see the screen, filled with pictures of the sanskrit text in the new chamber. The image is sharper now, the resolution far better than before. “It’s the translation, see. Of the sanskrit? I had it wrong, yesterday, when I read it. Before, I thought it said, _As you touch one, touch another._ But that’s wrong. See that marking, there, and this one?” She points to a curvy sort of mark that makes about as much sense to Nadine as the rest of it. Which is to say, not at all. “I needed to put it into past tense. So, it’s _As you’ve_ touched _one, touch_ the _other._ ”

Nadine doesn’t follow. She rubs her eyes, wishes fleetingly for a coffee, even as her mental taste buds shrivel at the thought. When she looks up, she notices there are bruises on Chloe’s neck, barely visible against the dark brown of her skin. She doesn’t remember making them, last night, though she’s sure she’s the one who did it, either from biting at her or sucking hard at the tender skin there. _Eish_. Looking at them makes her stomach pull pleasantly, so she avoids doing so. “...So?”

Chloe claps her laptop shut and hops off the jeep’s hood, as though invigorated by a newfound purpose. “What did we touch, before, that did this to us?”

Nadine yawns involuntarily. “An arrow?”

“Right. And it was in the temple, on an altar.”

Nadine is too drowsy, too befuddled by last night for guessing games. “So?” she says again.

Chloe grins triumphantly. “That big room we didn’t reach, before. With the new altar and the other murals. There’s something there that you and I have to touch, and when we do, it’ll switch us back.”

Now Nadine feels completely awake and alert, as though she’s just had a large cappuccino. Or a punch to the face. Could it really be so goddamned simple?

Then the obvious hits.

“Wait, are you _serious?_ ” she says, incredulous.

“I’m positive. All we need to do now—”

“Not about that,” snaps Nadine. “You translated it wrong?”

Chloe grimaces, raises a placating hand. “Now, look. Ancient sanskrit is bloody hard to read, alright? I did my best—”

Nadine bulls through her. “So we—we didn’t really have to have sex, then.”

An awkward silence falls. "Er. I guess?" Chloe grimaces again, then quirks her lips into a sheepish smile. “...Whoops?”

Nadine’s struck dumb. She doesn’t know whether to be furious with this or burst out laughing. Instead, she just stands there with her mouth open.

“Look, Nadine, it’s not a big deal—” Chloe starts.

“Not a big deal?” Nadine says, voice raised.

Looking irked, Chloe turns away to tuck her laptop back into its bag. “Well, fine, if you’re going to regret it, that’s on you. I’m going to get ready now, because what we need to get fixed is in that temple, and I plan on going in there to find it. You can join me if you like, or just wait here in the jeep and _pout_.”

She fiddles about with her things while Nadine continues to stand there, speechless, feeling more and more stupid the longer the silence continues. Chloe’s looking for her gun under the jeep’s passenger seat when Nadine finally steps up beside her.

“I don’t,” she says suddenly, defiant.

At that, Chloe turns her head slightly but doesn’t face her, clipping her holstered gun to her belt. “Don’t what?”

“Regret it.”

That gets her attention. Chloe stops what she’s doing and faces her, arms crossed, eyebrows lowered, unsure. “If you do, Nadine, it’s okay—”

“I don’t,” Nadine says with finality. She takes a step closer, close enough that they could touch if she were to reach out. Chloe goes visibly breathless for a moment, then turns red.

“Well,” she says lightly. “If you can’t tell I feel the same you’re way more clueless than I thought you were.”

Nadine looks away. “I, uh,” she starts, knowing that whatever comes out next has the potential to hurt Chloe, to drive her away, or to bring them impossibly closer, “I may have had that word directed at me before. Several times, in fact.”

“You don’t say?” Chloe looks at her with a palpable warmth. Nadine wants to melt. “Then let me be clear. I like you, china. Alot. Hope that’s okay.”

For a moment, Nadine can’t think of what to say. She ends up with, “You’re alright, too.”

Chloe rolls her eyes but looks happy. “Gosh. Spare me your gushing.” She gives Nadine a slow, dragged out up-and-down with her eyes, her smile wide and mischievous, then bites her lip. “Think I can have a kiss, please, because we run into this temple and get into some trouble?”

Still uncomfortable with the idea of kissing herself, Nadine decides to deal with it, and ducks in to kiss Chloe firmly, trying for chaste but emphatic. Chloe, of course, sneaks her tongue in and turns a five-second-kiss into something more like a good, sweaty thirty. When they part, she looks flushed and happy, and Nadine finds she doesn't mind so much.

“Maybe,” says Chloe with a promising wink, as she hands Nadine her own gun to be clipped at her hip, “once we get back into our own bodies, I can show you what I’m _really_ capable of.”

Nadine gulps. That almost seems a threat, but the most pleasant one she’s ever heard. “Ja. Alright.”

Chloe’s grin is radiant. “It’s a date, then.”

The thief darts forward and steals one more kiss—a quick one, this time—and then ducks off to rifle through their bags for rope. Nadine sets about getting herself ready—gulping down a quick breakfast of water and a ration bar, tying her hair up well as she can, checking her gear—then hears Chloe swear suddenly.

“Shit,” says Chloe, tapping at her phone. “Shit!”

Nadine’s stomach drops. “What?”

Chloe shakes her head. “Damon, he messaged the men last night. Didn't see it 'til now. He’s already bloody in there.”

Meaning, he has the drop on them now. They'll be stepping into _his_ territory, down there. Goddamn it. Maybe if they hadn’t had sex last night, hadn’t wasted energy and time tangled up in one another—

No. Nadine can’t regret it, even now. If she could go back, start the night over again, she’d spend it the exact same way. By the look in Chloe’s eyes, her partner feels the same.

A steely determination awakens inside Nadine. Her hands clench at her sides. “Get your things. Let’s go.”

“Nadine, if I’m right, and what we need to switch back is in that new chamber—”

Nadine’s tone is iron. “Then we need to get to it before Damon does.”

 

—

 

Getting inside the temple, Nadine is once more reminded that although Damon Mathers is most definitely a prick, he is still a rather smart one.

Just making it past the entrance is tricky. Damon’s left guards in nearly every hallway, sometimes patrolling in pairs, each sporting, at the very minimum, pistols or automatic weapons. Some are even armed with grenades or C4—the damage that could possibly be done to the temple structure with such an explosion is devastating to imagine.

Simply put, she and Chloe can’t go in guns blazing. The second they’re discovered or even suspected of being nearby, Damon will know. Nadine’s sure the man would have no problem bringing the entire temple down on all of them, if need be.

With no other viable option, they take the stealthy approach.

Twenty adrenaline-surging minutes later, Nadine’s taken out seven guards, Chloe, three. Subduing the men isn’t terribly hard to do with Chloe’s body, despite her weaker arms—in truth, it takes less force than you think to choke a man out and into unconsciousness, especially if you know what you’re doing. Nadine certainly does.

They stash the limp bodies where they can, in dark corners or behind rubble, leery of having another member of Damon’s team stumble upon them, though eventually they know the men will be missed, and Damon will catch on. Still, they must use the quiet time in between to their advantage, and get as far into the temple as they possibly can.

 _Slow and steady,_ Nadine reminds herself, though everything inside her is screaming to _run_ and _just get to the damn altar already, fix this, now, before Damon ruins it all—_

 _Breathe_ , she also reminds herself. They had this. They were going to get fixed.

They’re nearing the room with the initial altar and arrow where they were switched two weeks when they’re forced to sudden stop by the shuffle of feet and the telling scent of cigarette smoke. More guards. A barking voice rings out. Shit. Is it Damon?

Nadine determines with a quick glance that in the room is at least a dozen men. Though she can't see him, one of them is Damon. That many, she and Chloe simply can’t take on at once—one noise, one shout, one shot, and their element of surprise will be over, Damon and his men hunting for them like animals.

Nadine signals to Chloe and they retreat back down the hallway they’ve only just cleared. “We need to find a way around.”

Her partner doesn’t protest—rather, Chloe backtracks them several hallways, peering at her watch every so often to determine their direction, then starts looking overhead, at the dazzlingly high ceiling, the jagged rocks looming in the dark. Then, she points at an opening in the broken stone at least forty feet above them. It looks a bit like a tunnel, formed from a past earthquake or monsoon. “There. If I’m right, we go through that, we might have a shortcut into the new room.”

Of course, the only way to reach the opening is by scaling a sheer stone wall leading directly up to it. Throat dry, Nadine cranes her head back, eyes following the perilous journey in her mind. If this were two weeks ago, she'd quail here. She’s never had the head for heights that her partner has. Now, though, the flutter of doubt in Nadine's chest is immediately swept away by a tide of confidence. She is in Chloe's body, right now, and Chloe Frazer would find something like this wall child's play. All she needs to do is put her trust in her hands and feet, and climb.

"You can do it, Nadine," Chloe urges, her faith unshaken, resolute.

With great care, Nadine reaches out, and does just that. Soon, she's up ten feet. From below, the stone had appeared utterly smooth, but up close, she can detect with her keen eyes tiny handholds and outcrops for her feet. While her brain may think, _there’s no way I can pull myself up from that_ , her hand—Chloe’s strong, experienced hand—is already reaching automatically forward, as though it already  _knows_ it can. Soon, it’s rote, Nadine trusting purely in herself, in the sure hands that grip the tiny stones above, in the legs that brace her and push her upward, higher and higher.

She risks a glance down over her shoulder, and realizes with a dizzy rush just how far she’s truly climbed. Chloe is watching her with a dazzled expression that is close to proud, not appearing worried in the least. 

The opening is close, almost within reach. Below it, Nadine sets herself against the wall, gets her legs into a wider stance, and then reaches out with one hand and unerringly seizes the perilous lip of stone with a grip like iron. Then, feeling vaguely awestruck with herself and the sheer instinct moving her, her body naturally turns, releases with the other arm and legs, hangs there for a split second by one locked hand, and then she's taking a second hand-hold and hauling herself up and over the edge.

She collapses on her back, gasping with amazement. When will Chloe’s body stop surprising her? Nadine is positive her own body could never have handled such a strenuous climb, too used to quick and hard rather than slow and precise.

Once she’s collected herself, she ties the rope on her belt on the closest stable piece of stone and lowers it down to Chloe, who takes the rope into her hands with a slightly doubtful look.

“Never been the best at rope climb in gym, china,” she says. Nadine finds herself smiling. Now, it’s Chloe’s turn to put her faith in Nadine’s body.

“You can do it, Chloe.”

And Chloe does. Halfway up, an enormous smile begins to spread across her face, as if delighted at the ease in which Nadine’s muscle-corded arms haul her upward. She doesn’t even need to use her feet to cling to the rope. Only a few seconds later, she joins Nadine at the opening, a light sweat on her brow.

“Jesus. That was bloody brilliant.” She blinks. “I’m really going to miss this, you know.”

Nadine rolls her eyes, then finds the flashlight on her belt, toggles it. They’re in a natural hollow, formed by the structure of the temple itself after a partial collapse of the ceiling. There isn’t room to stand, but on hands and knees, they worm their way toward the direction Chloe claims the large chamber to be. The hollow is hot and dry, coated in years of dust and dead things. Nadine wonders how many others thought this opening might be a way to the treasure, and failed.

She’s relieved when, after a while of crawling and squirming, she sees the faintest of flickering lights from below. Through a crack in the stone beneath her, she presses her face close, and sees it; the new chamber and the second, bigger altar, the floor littered with the various gear and equipment of Damon’s men. She shushes Chloe, and they listen, hard, for movement, or voices, anything, and hear only an eerie silence.

Miraculously, it appears the chamber is empty—for now. Nadine can’t imagine Damon will take long to arrive. They have to hurry.

Without prompting, Chloe ushers Nadine to the side, then uses the brute force of her borrowed body to shove a piece of rock loose. It slips out of her arms before she can catch it and goes careening downwards. It hits a light, sends it crashing to the side with a tinkle of broken glass as the rock bounces away, the hollow thuds echoing throughout the room like cannonfire. They both freeze, grimacing. There’s no way nobody heard that.

Goddammit it.

“Hurry,” says Nadine.

Already ahead of her, Chloe sets her rope on a stray piece of jutting stone, then climbs swiftly down their new opening, the strength in her arms unfailing. Once her boots hit the floor of the new chamber, Nadine starts down herself.

Barely a second later, she feels the rocks above her shift. The rope pulls, then goes slack. Her stomach drops, and she realizes she’s falling.

She doesn't even manage the time to scream, just glances down to see Chloe staring up at her with wide eyes. Two weeks ago, Nadine is sure Chloe would’ve panicked or screamed, _I can’t bloody catch you, are you crazy!_ But she knows better now. They both do.

She plummets nearly thirty feet in a second. It feels like minutes, a crawl of spreading horror that renders all of her limbs numb and useless. She senses movement, then feels the jolt of impact and hears her partner gasp aloud from the force, muscle-knotted arms tight across her ribs and back, legs bent at the knees to absorb the force.

She’s done it. Chloe's caught her.

“Please don’t ever do that again,” groans Chloe, who gently lowers her to the ground. Nadine takes a moment before she can stand by herself. That was a little too close for comfort.

The raspy glide of stone on stone fills the chamber. Nadine goes utterly still—is it over? Has Damon finally reached them?—but no, it’s the altar in the center of the room. As if sensing their presence—and maybe it _is_ —the murals are sliding down, into the floor, revealing at last their hidden prize.

On the altar is a slender object resting on a piece of yellowish cloth. It looks like a—

“...Is that a bow?” says Nadine in disbelief. Though, she supposes it makes sense. A bow, to go with the arrow.

“Looks like it. But—” Chloe’s face pinches in sudden disbelief. “...No, it couldn’t...”

“What?”

“I mean, if I had to guess, I’d say that’s…” She hesitates. “Rama’s bow.”

Nadine looks at the bow again. Even from here, a dozen feet away, it is unspeakably beautiful. Dark and polished and glossy with a delicate pattern along the length of it. Gold caps the ends and is inlaid on the handle. It's not strung. It appears, to the naked eye, a perfectly ordinary, if gorgeously made, bow. And yet, Nadine can tell at a glance it's so much more than that. “You don’t think so? Why not?”

Chloe throws her hands into the air. “Where do I even start?” She begins to count on her fingers. “First of all, it’s a Hindu myth, the Ramayana. Myth entails, it didn’t happen. Second of all, Rama had two bows. The first, he got when he married his wife. Her father challenged all the princes in the land to string the mighty bow of Shiva—remember him?—and whoever could do it got to marry Sita. But nobody could even _lift_ it!”

“But Rama did—?”

“Of course Rama did. He didn’t just lift it. He—” She stops, eyes wide.

“He…?”

“He broke it.”

They both go quiet, letting that sink in.

Then, through the open chamber door on the far end, Nadine hears the rapid patter of booted feet, voices echoing off the walls, heading toward them. They’d been made.

“Shit!”

Together, they run to the altar. 

“It’ll break, won’t it?” Nadine says, just as it occurs to her. “If we touch it.”

“Yes,” says Chloe, sounding mournful. Nadine understands. Other than the arrow, which was similarly broken, this is the only other artifact worth anything they’ve found so far. To come so close to an unspeakable fortune—if, in fact, this really is the bow of Prince Rama—only to have to break it in the end; a priceless artifact, sacrificed for their plight. What irony!

Lights flicker in the hallway just before the room. The men are arguing about hearing a noise, followed by the bark of Damon’s harsh voice, shouting, " _Move!_ "

“If this doesn’t work,” says Chloe, “and we get shot and have to run for our lives, you won’t hold it against me, will you?”

“It’ll work,” says Nadine. It has to.

They touch the bow.

Nothing happens.

Inside, Nadine wails. Her nape prickles with alarm, the knowledge that in another second or two, the room will be filled with their enemies, and they’ll have nothing but their own pistols to fight back with, and—

“Wait,” says Chloe suddenly, and reaches out to put a hand on Nadine’s arm, “Last time, we were touching, too, so—”

 

—

 

Chloe’s on the floor, face down. Her head’s spinning. She feels sick. Her skin is _crawling_. She might throw up. Might not.

She groans. Rolls over, onto her back.

“China?” she calls weakly, and then stops with a gasp.

That voice—!

“Oh, holy shit,” says Chloe, and then _squeals_.

It’s _her!_ Her voice! Her mouth, her body! They’ve done it! She’s bloody her, again!

“Nadine? Nadine!”

Someone grunts. They don’t sound very happy. Chloe squints. It’s Nadine, getting slowly to hands and knees a few feet away, shoulders slumped, hair in disarray, like she’s been thrown back by an invisible blast. Her head is down. Chloe can’t see her face.

Before Chloe can speak, can yell to Nadine in triumph, she glances up—or, down, depending how you look at it. She is still laying there on her back, after all.

Less than six inches from her head is a half-ring of gun barrels pointed directly at her, in the hands of at least twenty men wearing fatigues and half-masks, mouths covered and noses hidden from view, the eyes above hardened and merciless. Mercenaries, by the looks of it. Well-trained. Or not. She and Nadine did make it all the way in here, after all.

Chloe grins at them good-naturedly, though they’re upside down to her at the moment. “Hi there.”

None of the men respond. Or blink, which is a little creepy. Finally, one turns his head slightly to the side, and calls out over his shoulder, “We’ve got them, sir.”

A steady tromp of boots rings in Chloe’s ear. Still upside down—she’s too dizzy to get up, and even if she does stand, the guns will still be pointed at her, so who cares?—she watches as the crowd parts and backs away respectfully, and the man of the hour comes striding through, leering at them both.

“Well, well, well,” grins Damon Mathers, looking smug as ever, “I hope you—”

The rest of Damon’s sentence cuts off prematurely with a strangled “ _urk_ ” as Nadine Ross, back in the proper flesh for the first time in two weeks, rockets forward and smashes a hard-clenched fist right into the shelf of his jaw, sending him reeling and halting his no-doubt (in his opinion) grand victory speech. Chloe hears a muffled crunch—Damon’s face breaking, probably—and is pretty sure she sees a tooth go flying. Maybe two.

Before anyone can move or even wonder how to react to that, Damon’s eyes are rolling up into his skull, and he collapses like a sack of rocks. The very second he hits the ground Nadine launches herself on top of him, holding him down by the throat with one hand and hammering her other fist again and again into his face, the thud of impact growing noticeably wetter and wetter with each hit.

Still, nobody moves, as if stupefied into inaction, except Chloe, who very slowly rights herself and sits up. Watching Nadine work is, in a word… inspiring.

It’s nearly a minute before Nadine’s done. Finished—only for now, surely—Nadine stops and then gets to her feet, standing over Damon’s sprawled out body—corpse?—with a dark, formidable air radiating from her in waves. She cuts a menacing figure in the gloom of the room around them, torchlight gleaming over the striated muscles of her bare arms and shoulders, fingers and swollen knuckles glistening with blood. Even Chloe’s a little taken aback, though in a very, very good way.

The men surrounding them are frozen in terror. Guns have dropped. So have mouths, Chloe’s sure.

"Who's next?" Nadine asks in a low growl. Chloe feels an illicit thrill. Her partner is just getting started. It's a party, now. Too bad she didn't remember the balloons.

At last, one of the mercenaries manages to find his guts from where they've shriveled up on the floor, and shouts, “G-get them!”

And, well. Gets a bit hectic from then on, for Chloe.

Nadine is—well, there’s no other word for it. She’s _rampaging_. Probably something do with the combination of joy from being reunited with her own body at last and the same sort of superpower strength mother’s experience when saving their children. Only in this scenario Chloe's the child, and Nadine's the mother, which is not really where she was going with that, but _whatever_. She's still a bit turned around from the change back. Sue her.

By the time Chloe’s even gotten her gun out, Nadine’s already shot three men and is aiming for a fourth. A fifth has a bead on her, however, so Chloe takes him out with a quick shot to the torso. He falls, and then suddenly everyone is trying to get behind cover, mercenaries shouting orders on top of orders, none of which are being followed, especially as Nadine goes charging straight into the fray, rather than away from it. A man aims his pistol at Chloe, then finds himself flying over Nadine’s head as the woman flips him deftly over her hip, slams him to the ground, and kicks him in the face, breaking his nose with a crunch. Two others try to come to his defense, and Nadine grabs one by the wrist, twists it the wrong way 'round, kicks him in the elbow, and sends him to the floor. The other, she soccer-kicks in the stomach so hard Chloe's surprised her boot doesn't come out the other side, then uppercuts him when he bends double. The look on her face is practically euphoric. Like she's _happy_ these men are picking a fight with them.

Chloe hates to disappoint, and springs to join her so they're back to back, fending off stray punches or kicks and shooting the ones trying to aim at them behind rubble. An energy is swimming through the air. Chloe can feel it as though it is a physical thing. It's coming off her, she realizes—her, and Nadine. It ebbs and flows, and Chloe finds herself following it, and realizes she and Nadine are moving in perfect tandem now, as if they can read each other's thoughts—Chloe ducks so her partner can punch a man coming in for a tackle just as Chloe takes out a would-be sniper across the room, Nadine pivoting to deliver a brutal kick to another man's groin as Chloe slides against her back, arms perfectly aimed for a haymaker of her own with another. She recognizes the feeling, then—it's their natural dynamic, hard-earned from their battle in India and beyond, the tempo they created with one another on the train with Asav—only now there is a far deeper understanding between them; the true knowledge of the strength of each other’s bodies, the trust they've developed for one another multiplied tenfold, understood and experienced only with each other and no one else. Sharing bodies, living within each other for so many days, has created this for them.

Soon everything is a blur, things moving too fast to comprehend whose hand is whose, whose fist, whose arm, leg, and it goes faster and faster until it almost feels as though they’ve become a single being, moving in a pure, unstoppable tandem, in a beautiful orchestration of harmony and destruction. Nadine is Chloe—Chloe is Nadine. There is no them, just a singular us.

And together, as they’d done that day in India on the back of a screaming train barrelling towards certain death, they face unspeakable odds, and emerge victorious.

At least, that's how Chloe's counting it, once all the mercenaries are down, either groaning and rolling 'round on the floor, or lying dead or unconscious in heaps. She's sweaty, covered in dirt and wheezing for breath, fists sore from throwing punches, from holding her gun so tight, but she's not shot and neither is Nadine—they've done it, they really have—

Giddy, Chloe leaps on her partner with legs squeezing around her hips and arms behind her neck and kisses her.

"That—" Another kiss. "—was—" Another. "—bloody—" One last one. "— _fantastic_."

Nadine laughs against her mouth, and Chloe can't get over it, that this is her partner, back in her true body, and she's in hers, and—

And wait, what's that sound?

Nadine hears it, too, head snapping to the side, putting Chloe back on her feet in alarm.

"What—?"

Shapes crowd the nearby hallway.

"Are you kidding me, there's more?" Chloe whines.

Another twenty or so mercenaries flood the room. Chloe backs up, Nadine trailing her. The mercenaries see their fallen brothers and waste no time. Automatic weapons bristle, fire without warning. Chloe yelps, ducks. Superior firepower prompts a dive for cover, the closest being the altar in the center of the room. She and Nadine scramble behind it. The bow is gone now, she notices. There aren’t even splinters left, just the golden cloth from before, fallen to the ground beside them. Chloe ignores it, waits for a pause in the barrage of gunfire currently chipping away at their stone protection, and risks leaning out to shoot a few back. A bullet wings her shoulder. She gasps in pain, and Nadine snarls and shoots the man responsible right between the eyes.

Again comes the sound of stone scraping on stone. Chloe's spine tingles. Oh, shit. “Uh, Nadine?”

Nadine, who is currently attempting to shoot a man edging around the altar toward them, doesn't seem to notice that the altar they're currently sheltered behind is now sinking into the floor, just as the one with the arrow had, before. They're about to lose their only cover." _Nadine!_ " Chloe cries.

Nadine finally shoots the man, then seems to notice what's going on. Quite suddenly, the altar is swallowed up, and then the floor is shifting under them with a massive rumble, dust pluming from the ceiling. The remaining men shout in confusion, pinwheeling their arms for balance.

The altar is gone now. In its place is a rather familiar-looking circle.

She and Nadine are inside it, Chloe notices. Everyone else in the room, however, is not.

Chloe stands. Grins. And drops her gun.

Nadine copies her only a second later. They put their hands up in surrender.

Confused, the mercenaries aim their guns but don't fire. After a moment, they seem to grow a bit more confident, and loom forward, thinking they've won. 

"Y-You..." Chloe hears, and realizes with a start that's Damon’s up, trying to stagger to his feet and speak through a broken jaw at the same time and failing spectacularly at both.

“You won’t get away with this,” he groans, baring blood-stained teeth. “I’ll—”

Out of the floor comes a forest of spears, piercing every single one of the men standing around them, turning them into literal pin-cushions and killing them pretty much instantly, Damon very much included, the sharp, rusted heads bristling upon every available surface—

—everywhere except the circle, where Chloe and her partner are quite safe from harm, thank you very much.

Only a few seconds later, the spears retreat, and the bodies slump lifelessly to the ground around them. Chloe spares Damon about half a glance, feeling only slightly sorry for him, if only for the fact that he _still_ never got to have his little speech. Poor guy.

"Well," says Chloe, exhaustion starting to set in as the adrenaline fades. "That was—"

There's a distant rumble. Nadine perks at the sound, then looks grim. Chloe feels a sudden flash of dread.

"Don't suppose Damon would've planted explosives all along the temple on the off-chance he never made it back out, do you?" she asks her partner. It's a bit of a rhetorical question, but still.

Nadine gives her a blank look.

"Right, stupid question, of course he would."

“Well, shit," grunts Nadine.

“Run?” Chloe suggests.

“Ja. Running sounds good.”

 

—

 

They make it back to the jeep in one piece, although Chloe's not exactly sure how. A miracle, perhaps? Afterwards, everything's sort of a blur again. She's pretty sure she falls asleep in the jeep at some point, as she doesn't remember the drive back to town. She _does_ remember finding Sully at the nearest bar and giving him a real hug, this time, but then the plane ride back to mainland India is a bust. Chloe's dead to the world, out like a light against her partner's stolid shoulder. Nadine, at least, shakes her awake once they land so she can give Sully a proper goodbye.

On the taxi ride to the airport, it all becomes perfectly clear to Chloe, the scope of what they've truly accomplished.

In the space of two short yet seemingly endless weeks, they've found a temple already claimed by another, been cursed to live in each other's bodies, semi-successfully tricked bystanders into believing they were themselves, snuck back to the afore-mentioned temple, broke the curse that claimed them, beat the bad guy and his goons, and—Chloe likes to think—got the girl in the end.

“Doing alright, Ross?” Chloe teases, once they reach the airport and walk inside.

Nadine gives her a skeptical look. "Unless I got shot and just didn't notice it—"

"Not what I mean," Chloe scolds. "You sure you won't miss me too much?"

Nadine catches on. Smiles, gives the hand in hers an affectionate squeeze. "Think I’m good, Frazer,” she says with good humor. "No offense, but I'm always going to prefer being in my own body." To soften the blow, she puts her arm around Chloe’s hip and pulls her close, ignoring anyone who stares.

“Well." Chloe grins. "No offense taken. Thanks for the visit, though. It is good to be back.” She smiles, cocks her head in a way she hopes—and knows—is terribly endearing. She’s hoping for another smile in return, maybe a bit of a squeeze from that arm—

To her surprise, she gets a kiss instead, Nadine holding her firmly as she seals their mouths together. Chloe’s not ashamed to say she’s pretty breathless by the time Nadine pulls away, and chases those lips for one last press before sighing with the loss of it.

Nadine sighs too. “Going home empty-handed again,” she grouses, taking a step from Chloe and putting her hands in her pockets.

Chloe gives her an intent up-and-down. “I wouldn’t say that.”

Rather than flush and look away, Nadine replies, “I wouldn’t, either," and then pulls the back of her shirt up and brings out—what?

It’s the cloth, the one that was under the bow, back at the temple. Only, it’s not a cloth, she realizes suddenly, as Nadine hands it over.

It’s a deerskin. Chloe touches it with a trembling hand, marveling. It’s softer than satin, impossibly so, the short furs the unnatural color of pure gold, so bright it  almost stings her eyes. Or maybe that’s just from the lump in her throat.

It may not be treasure or a Prince's priceless bow, but it’s sure something, alright.

“You saved the day, china.” Chloe grins up at her, unspeakably grateful. If they're lucky, they can fund some more adventures with this. Or maybe just keep it as a memento. “My hero.”

Nadine accepts one more kiss and then heads off to pick up their tickets. She’s gone a bit longer than Chloe thinks is necessary, waiting for her with the luggage, but maybe that’s just her own rapidly growing neediness when it comes to her partner.

Though, now that she thinks about it—Nadine hasn’t mentioned anything about, you know, being together. Chloe simply assumed something would happen now. Not an exchanging of rings of anything. Usually, she avoids relationships like the plague. One with Nadine, however… Now, that’s something to think about.

Still, Nadine hasn’t outright mentioned a want to be girlfriends, or something of the like. Maybe she’s doesn't like labels. Or maybe she's taken Chloe up on that offer from before, of forgetting everything they’ve done out of embarrassment. Chloe won’t hold it against her—she promised she wouldn't, and holds to her word—but still, the idea of it, of leaving all that behind… It doesn’t sit well with her.

Nadine’s back a minute later, two tickets in her hand and a blank look on her face.

“Here’s yours,” she says.

“Thanks, love.” Chloe takes it, scans it briefly while grabbing her bag, then does a double-take. “Uh, sorry. Think I got yours?” The ticket in her hand is for Johannesburg, South Africa. But, wait, that’s her name, there. Could it be…?

She looks up at Nadine questioningly, feeling a warm, happy bit of hope filling her chest.

Nadine cuts her eyes to the side, rubs the back of her neck with her palm. “Said something about meeting my mother, didn’t you?”

A slow smile begins to spread across Chloe’s face. She’s going to kiss this bloody woman stupid, mark her words. “...Yes?”

Nadine clears her throat. She’s so adorable Chloe almost can’t take it. “Still want to?”

Chloe’s grin is so big it hurts. She bites her lip, fans herself with her new ticket. “You don’t mind?”

Now Nadine meets her eyes. “If you’re too busy, Chloe, really, I won’t—”

“No!” Chloe cuts in, suddenly terrified Nadine will rescind her offer. She misses her home, sure, but the prospect of spending more time with her partner is too good to pass up. London can wait, far as she's concerned.

“Alright. Good.” Nadine seems pleased, though still somewhat nervous. Chloe can only imagine how much of a wreck she’ll be once they actually get to her mother’s place. She laughs, steps forward so they’re chest-to-chest. Automatically, Nadine’s arms come around her sides and hold her. The familiar strength of her is wondrous. Chloe wants to sink into it.

“So, I’m meet-your-mother material now, am I? Does that mean I'm officially your girlfriend?”

“Not if you keep talking,” Nadine quips, but she’s smiling too.

Chloe pulls away so she can grab her bag, and crooks her other arm into Nadine’s elbow, leans against her. “Please tell me we’re sitting next to each other on the flight.”

“Ja. But you can entertain yourself. I'm beat. I think I'm going to try one of those naps of yours for myself.”

Chloe smiles up at her, not sure of the last time she's been so happy. “Whatever you want, _liefling_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lived bitch


End file.
